


Afterworld

by wifeofstark



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Eventual Smut, M/M, METAL ARM, Stephens new suit, Tony can't stay retired, Tony lives, Vampire! Stephen, post Engame
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-27
Updated: 2020-05-23
Packaged: 2021-03-02 00:27:22
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 9
Words: 30,458
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23876164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wifeofstark/pseuds/wifeofstark
Summary: Post the defeat of Thanos, Tony sets out to remember what it's like to not be Iron Man. When Stephen reaches out he thinks maybe he doesn't have to figure it out alone.That's until death comes knocking at their door.
Relationships: Tony Stark/Stephen Strange
Comments: 59
Kudos: 160





	1. Day

“So?”

He lifts his arm, bends it at the elbow, folds his fingers from pinkie to thumb. It’s so the same, so real, if he were to close his eyes he could forget it’s all nanotech, no flesh.  
“It’s like nothing ever happened”

Bruce sweeps the status hologram out of existence and smiles at him. “In that case don’t look in the mirror”

“Haha very funny” Bruce ignores his glare, stepping close to tug his arm at the elbow, lift it to its limit and jerk it around. It’s the scientist in him, even though they both know it's not just going to break, it’s the tech from his suit but improved, it’d take a lot to defeat it. 

“Are you sure everythings fine? I have a dinner date I need to get to”

He squeezes Bruce's shoulder with his new hand. It’s strange that his brain knows the texture of his shirt, it knows the fabric he’s touching is a bit too thick for his liking, but his fingers are all synthetic. “Yea all good, Friday is here if I need anything, but who cares about that, who is this date with?”

When Bruce sighs it somehow makes gravity fall heavier on his massive shoulders. “Don’t get all excited, it's with Rick and his wife Chandler. She was my girlfriend back in the day” 

“Oh that does smell like a bummer, at least there will be food involved”

“Yea thank the lord for tiny food” He grumbles at his giant hands. 

“It’s okay buddy, I’ll order you the Burger King menu tomorrow” 

“And that’s why you’re my favourite” Bruce spuds him, two hands that have wielded the Infinity stones joined, if his even counts, being charred out of functionality and in a freezer somewhere. He cringes inside at the thought of his limb existing independently to him. 

“Don’t let Scott hear you say that” 

With Bruce’s heavy footsteps becoming distant, he slides off the lab table and trots into the conservatory. They've planted new trees and plants, all infantile still, oblivious to the destruction the old ones saw. The compound still has a ways to go before it’s completely rebuilt, in his retirement he’s decided to oversee the process. People tell him he needs to rest, recover, internalise what happened and what's next. He’s afraid to do that in truth, he doesn’t want to sit around thinking about the past, thinking about it all being over. He’s done, in no shape to be the Invincible Iron Man now that he can’t even handle two flights of stairs. What he is is a decorated war hero, past his peak and sitting around waiting for his right lung to finally collapse. So he’ll project manage the compound, then he’ll do something else, and what follows, so when he chokes to death he can croak that he wasn't waiting around for it. 

Buzzing brings him back to the moment, it’s a call from an unknown number and it’s coming from Manhattan. “Hello can I help you?”

“Not at this time, my magical ass is perfectly fine”

It’s less than a second and he knows who he’s talking to. “Strange! Good to hear from you, I haven't seen you since… well you know, how are you?”

“Well with no time stone to protect with my life I’m lost for purpose” He chuckles. He remembers the doctor has such a smooth voice, it slips into the ear like water down glass. 

“I thought your purpose was to protect Earth from mystical threats”

“Would you look at that, you actually listen” that takes him back to the Sanctum, to the ship, without it he would really start to feel as if he were talking to another man with the same name. 

“Haha, what do you need?” He squats down to peer at one of the sprouts behind the glass. It seems to have not grown at all, he should talk to the gardener about it. 

“Need? Nothing. How are you?”

He frowns at the innocent sprout. “You seriously called just to ask me how I am?”

“Yep.”

“Why?”

“You wielded the Infinity stones, you almost died and half your body almost disintegrated. Isn't that enough reason?”

He’s surprised that Stephen would care at all, from the start he expressed he cares about the stone, the magic and not a single other thing. But the snaps changed them all.  
“Alright, I’m doing well, keeping myself busy rebuilding the compound, and as you might have expected I did get my arm amputated”

“How did that go?”

“Let’s just say I’m thankful I’m Tony Stark” He’s had a toe in the prosthetics business for a while but that, but watching Rhodey learn to walk again, none of it creates understanding like living it does. The new arm isn’t really just like having his real one, it’ll never feel completely natural, but he’s wearing the most advanced prosthetic arm in the world. Some people don’t have anything, if they're lucky maybe a piece of plastic with some joints. 

“It’s a unique privilege” 

“That is for sure,” he stands up and looks at the sky light. The sun is peeking through two clouds. “Hey the weather is going to be really nice tomorrow, can I treat you to coffee with a guarantee of a beautiful outdoor view ruined by Avengers Tower?”

“That could be anywhere in New York”

Who would have thought Stephen Strange would make him laugh. “Ever so polite Mr Strange”

“I’m kidding Tony, that would be nice”

He’s caught for a second, in truth the invite just fell out of his mouth before his brains authorisation and after that he was sure the man would say no. “Well alright, I’ll pick you up brunch time” 

“Until then” Stephen ends the call and Tony just stares at his phone for a minute, wondering what exactly happened, how exactly he's getting coffee with Dr strange. 

-

Tony wouldn't admit to anybody that when he pulls up to the Sanctum his hand is sweating on the wheel. It’s not first date sweats, but pure nerves. In truth there’s something he likes about Stephen, but he’s scared if they spend time together they’re just going to fall into what they had at first, sparks and fire. 

Regardless, he’s a grown man and what will come will come, so he steps out of his car and climbs the Sanctum steps to decisively knock on the heavy doors. There’s no need for that apparently, they sweep open on their own.

He tentatively steps in, looking around the room. They fixed the stairs. “Stephen?”

“Yes, hello” He appears at the top of the stairs.

Tony’s shocked at the sight of him. He’s wearing a white t-shirt and black jeans. He’d never imagined him out of those garish robes and standing before him he looks so regular, a man not a wizard.

“Let’s see the arm” He realises that Stephens made it down the stairs and is in fact standing right infront of him. He stretches out his arm and he takes it by the wrist, turning it from side to side. It tells his brain Stephens' grip is light, his fingers are warm, that they tremble so slightly. “Can you feel things?”

“Yea,” He holds Stephens wrist, “your pulse is steady”

“I hope so” He laughs, leading the way back onto the street. 

“Can I ask you, how do you greet people? I know hand shakes aren’t exactly…”

“Well in the Order we bow, it’s very convenient for me”

“In that case, hi” he bows slightly.

Stephen finds it very amusing but bows back anyway, “You look well Tony” 

He scoffs, leading the way down the street, it's only a 10 minute walk. “You don’t have to say that” 

“Seriously you wear the scars well” 

He hasn’t decided if that’s true yet, everything is just so different; the man that looks back at him in the mirror, the hand that holds the edge of the sink, the world that’s so quiet. 

“I was lucky, Dr Cho said I kept my eye sight by a hair” The burning stopped just at the outer corner of his eye socket, any further and he’d have to ask Nick where he gets his eye patches from. 

“How is your health otherwise?”

“My right lung got damaged, I have an appointment with her soon to see what we can do about it”

“And your brain? Is everything working the same?”

“Hey you’re off the clock, stop it” His brain isn't any different but it’s questionable if that's good enough, it would be nice to forget, to unlearn the habit of constantly looking over his shoulder waiting for something to go wrong. Thanos was his nightmare for years and when he watched him dissolve into ash he foolishly thought it was over. It’s not over, because his stupid brain keeps telling him how vast the universe is, how Thanos can’t have been the biggest or the only threat, that something else will threaten the cosmos once again. 

“Yea I know, it’s like riding a bike”

They walk into the café and immediately all eyes are on them. Attention used to fuel his fire, but there is no fire anymore. 

Stephen orders, he orders, the barista says something about the Avengers bringing back her dad and he holds his wrist over the card reader before Stephen can finish reaching into his pocket. The girl wrote thank you on his cup with a heart, he smiles at her, and the two of them find a table outside. 

The beaming sun pulls him back to the reality that was becoming a distant echo at the mercy of the pit of his thoughts and he remembers what they were talking about. “Why do you care so much? I recall once you said you would let me die over a little rock”

“It is not a ‘little rock’”

“I know, I’m kidding”

“My reason is… it’s a bit selfish”

He instructs the nanos in his forearm to form a metal straw and extracts it, stabbing the top of his iced coffee with it. “That's the human condition”

When he’s done being perplexed by what he’s witnessed Stephen clears his throat and replies, “Well I feel like it’s my fault this happened to you” 

“Blaming yourself for something that’s not your fault I see” He scrutinises Stephen over his shades. The guy did what he had to do, there was only one way they could win.

“We have that in common” 

“We do?” Stephen is right but he’s not sure how he would know something like that.

Stephen smiles kindly at his expression. “Remember Tony I know more about you than you think”

“Oh yea. What do you know? What's my favourite flower?”

“Okay I don’t know that much about you. I just know that you're brave, sometimes too brave, that you're snarky but underneath it you care, you're smart and powerful, and you really like dying for the good of others, a lot.”

It’s a lot to digest so he takes a minute to do so. Usually he would tell him he’s wrong, but he’s not giving his opinion, he’s saying what he saw. “So that’s why you're nice to me now? Because you learned I’m not really an asshole?”

He considers that for a moment, then nods, “That’s the gist of it yea”

“And in several sets of five years you saw nothing bad?”

He opens his mouth to reply, thinks better of it, then goes ahead anyway. “Well, I saw that you were lonely”

They sit quietly for a while.

“When half the world is gone and you get divorced it does get pretty quiet” He did speak to people; Nat, Rhodey, Bruce, Friday and even Pepper. But he was mostly alone, he couldn't get back into the world, the loss of everyone, the loss of Peter, shackled him. 

“Do you still live in that cabin by the lake?”

He shakes his head, “I’ve moved close to the compound, I might sell the cabin”

“Why? It seemed nice in my visions”

It is nice, it’s homey and quiet and exactly what he’s wanted since Ultron. But the silence speaks. “It’s a family home, it kept reminding me that I was there alone”

“Oh right”

“Anyway tell me about you, you owe it to me” he says, blowing away the grey. He’s had enough of it inside his own head. 

Stephen pushes out his lip in thought. He hadn’t noticed before but he has good lips. “Well, I don’t have a favourite flower”

“That’s a tragedy but tell me something deep and personal” He leans on the table, it’s small so it puts them pretty close. 

“I… I’m pretty lonely too”

“I thought you were going to give me a bullshit answer, I don't know what to say now”

Stephen leans back on his chair, regaining space between them, “I don’t mind it, it comes with the job”

“Or maybe people are too intimidated by the huge stick up your ass to get close to you” he supplies. 

Stephen bursts out laughing and Tony’s struck. He’s gorgeous and goofy, sharp yet soft. It took them not being in a near death situation for him to realise that Stephens' face commands the sun to shine on it, to show everyone its unique allure. 

They stay about an hour, talking about this and that; Stephen tells stories about Wong, he tells stories about Peter, they discuss the things about the blip like people losing their homes and spouses having new partners. Eventually though Stephen has to get back to his duties and Tony has to get back to pestering construction workers. 

He leaves Stephen with a bow that brings out his goofy smile and drives Upstate wondering if it was all a dream, if he’ll ever hear from him again. It was so contrasted from what he knew of Stephen, all hard lined and hostile. 

As it turns out his questions are answered two days later, when Stephen sends him a voice message. 

“Sir Time magazine contacted again asking to see you”

He looks up from the notification on his phone, at his bathroom mirror. He almost asks Friday what she thinks of the way he looks, but no, he’s not young anymore, it doesn't matter. 

“Tell them to call me later” He sighs, putting his phone down so he can wax his hair into place while he listens to the note.

‘I meant to ask you what your favourite flower was’

He has to laugh before he replies. ‘Gee Stephen are you that bored?’

He gets dressed, if you call joggers and a t-shirt getting dressed, and when he's poured his first coffee of the day his phone buzzes on the kitchen counter. 

‘Mystical threat rates are at a low, answer the question’

‘Sunflowers’ 

Again Tony wonders if this is just a fluke, if Stephen will get busy and disappear. Again he's wrong, it goes on for days. They’re both busy people so replies are far between, but there’s never a goodbye, it’s a long back and forth immune to the sets and rises of the sun and full of new discovery. He feels young again, he feels the way he did after Afghanistan with Pepper, excited to hear Stephens voice, wanting to see him again to learn more. 

So when Stephen stops replying that excitement dooms him. When he takes a moment for lunch, sat at in the half built kitchen with king prawn noodles, he plays Stephens latest message again;

‘After Thanos I left Earth and leaned new powers, I even picked up a new suit, I wasn’t prepared enough for him’

That was two days ago. He sent two messages back and they still go unread. Dejected, he hunches over the counter and continues to eat in silence. 

-

Another two days of nothing and he can’t take it anymore, even if Stephen is perfectly okay and just decided to ignore him he has to know why. So in the evening he jumps in his silver R8 and heads into Manhattan to get to the bottom of it all. 

The sanctum looks still, normal, like Stephen could be in there just reading a book. He pounds on the door. It opens on it’s own again, slower this time, like it’s not certain he’s safe. 

At the foot of the stairs is a woman in robes so white they look like they could repel dirt like a force field. She has a strange appearance about her, pale skin, teal hair, one pink eyeball and another blue, both without iris or pupil, both glowing slightly. 

“The Sanctum tells me you are a welcome guest. It tells me you are Tony Stark” She's looking in his direction, but it's hard to know if she's looking at him, without pupils. He wonders if she’s blind. 

“Yea I am. Who are you?”

She bows slightly, hands clasped in front of her. “Master Alia, newly of this Sanctum”

He steps inside, barely hearing the door shut over his thoughts. “What about Dr Strange?”

“Were you uninformed? Dr Strange was killed”


	2. Dawn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “What happened to you?” he whispers, not needing to because Stephen's grip is firm but not tight. 
> 
> “We’re different now”
> 
> He curls his flesh fingers around Stephen's wrist. “How are we different? Tell me”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bit of a short one here

“I’m sorry what?” He couldn't have heard right, dead? How could Stephen be dead, he can't just die. 

“Wong informed me that he had an altercation with his brother and he killed him” 

“He’s… dead” Tony knows death well, better than he would like to, but it doesn't make sense this time, he's seen Stephen, how could anything kill him?

“Were you two close?”

"I- well yes and no- excuse me" he bursts out of the sanctum and gulps in air like there wasn't any in there.

It makes no sense. He survives his accident, monsters from other dimensions, Thanos, and now he's gone… because his brother killed him. It makes no sense.

He realises he's pacing in front of the sanctum and stops, holding on to a streetlight by his car to get his bearings. It doesn't work, he still feels disoriented. He saw Stephen only two weeks ago, healthy and alive, he felt his pulse, he had a pulse. He wouldn't now. 

There's no way. 

The light post dents under his metal hand.

The sun sets, he goes home, and he sits, he sits in the same spot for hours thinking about everything yet nothing. Eventually Friday turns the light on in the living room and he's less lost within the walls of his mind. 

Friday. 

"Friday, who is Stephen's brother?"

"Victor Strange"

He looks up from his hands. "And what can you tell me about him?"

"Victor Strange, born in Nebraska USA, status: deceased-"

"Wait what?"

"Sir he has been deceased for 10 years"

"What the ever living fuck?" When he can pick his jaw up he grabs his phone and calls Stephens number. It rings to voicemail. "You're not dead asshole, what t- sorry, no, I don't know why I'm mad, maybe you have a good reason. I can keep a secret" 

He leaves it at that, dropping his phone on the couch and staring through the window at the black outside. 

-

The next day he wakes to see still nothing from Stephen so he gets Wong's number from Bruce.

"Who is this?"

"Stark"

There's a long pause, "Can I help you?"

"What happened to Stephen?" 

The line cuts. 

He almost throws his phone across the room. 

The next few days are better, he's not consumed by whatever's happening, only mildly irritated, because he knows for certain Stephen isn't dead and clearly whatever bullshit the wizards are up to doesn't concern him. He focuses on his agenda, sees Cho, does the Time interview, and gets the kitchen in the compound finished. 

Yet this thing that isn't his concern comes back his way when he walks into his own kitchen the next night and Wong is there drinking tea like it's his house.

"Jesus Wong you could have rang the intercom like a human"

"You wanted to know what's going on with Stephen" He flicks his wrist and a folded piece of paper floats to him. He plucks it from the air and reads an address. 

"This is my address" he realises out loud. 

"What do you mean?" 

He shows Wong the note like he didn't author it. "I own this house" 

"Maybe that's why he chose it" he contemplates.

"What's going on?"

Wong looks lost for words. "You have to see him, I couldn't quite explain" 

"Fine. I would love to know why he went dark on me then decided my house was his house" he grumbles, pacing to choose a car key and grab the cabin keys. Wong is gone when he comes back through the kitchen. 

When he gets to the cabin he can faintly see one light through the sheer curtains. It turns off when he turns into the drive. 

He doesn't call for Stephen, just unlocks the door and almost smacks his face into it when it doesn't open. The bastard used the latch. "Stephen open the door"

No answer.

"You're in my fucking house. Let me in" he bashes on the door.

Nothing. 

"Fine. I'm not leaving until you come out" he decides, stomping over to one of the chairs on the porch and planting himself there. 

As it turns out he played himself. Stephens inside, in his house, warm and protected and he's outside in the dark with cold air persisting on the back of his neck. He knows Stephen knows that, yet it doesn't cause him to come outside. Maybe it was a dream, the 'nice guy' Stephen. Maybe he asked him all those questions because it was his plan all along to take his house from him for God knows what reason. 

It's fresh when he wakes. He must have fallen asleep. Dawn surrounds him, the sky is lighter, soon to be lit by the sun and the smell of nature carries in the humid air. 

He stretches, finds his neck is all cramped up, and pushes out of the chair. It's when he's trying to see how far his head can turn each way that he sees a figure at the lake. It has to be Stephen. 

Using his metal arm he vaults over the rail and lands silently on grass, making his way towards the figure that is definitely Stephen, if the cloak isn't enough give away.

It's dead quiet, too early for the birds and not a day for wind. Sometimes at dawn a mist settles over the lake. It makes the moment ominous.

He's about 10 feet away when Stephen moves. It makes him stop moving. 

The second he turns around and makes eye contact Tony's struck. Not struck with realisation but struck with surprise. Stephen looks different, his eyes are so vibrant, too vibrant, like he'll blink and see them printed on his eyelids. He can't blink though, there's too much to see, like that he looks pale, and sad. 

"Stephen?" The same time he advances a step Stephen outstretches his hand. 

He falls. 

Mud and grass becomes a hard smooth floor, the smell of trees becomes the smell of cement and air freshener. He's at the Compound. 

“Mr Stark are you okay?”

He turns on his back to look up at Peter who looks like he’s about to have a heart attack.  
“I’m fine” he sits up and takes the assist Peter gives him to stand.

“Wooow look at the arm” 

Peter spends the day at the compound, helping out where he can. Tony feels bad for the construction workers, grown men watching a teenager throw around loads that they would struggle with. They have a nice day, taking a lunch break to catch up on their respective lives and make silly jokes, and it’s only when he’s dropped Peter home for dinner that he remembers the happenings of that morning.

He doesn’t even stop at home, he drives straight from Queens to the cabin determined to get a word out of that wizard asshole even if he has to reach into his throat and yank it out.

He has a lot of time to think on the drive, about the mystery around Stephen, about the sight of him that morning, enough that when he gets to the drive there’s no hesitation. He unlocks the door and doesn't let the latch stop him, burning through it with a laser built between his knuckles. It’s dark inside, the sun having just set, and it looks like no one's home, how it should be. 

He sighs a storm, thinking maybe something is wrong with his brain, maybe he is having visions of pale men in the dew of the morning. But when he turns on the lamp by the armchair it lights up a hand on the arm rest, he follows the hand up to the profile of Stephens face.

“Why don’t you quit?” He grits out, jaw sharpening and stare fixed ahead. 

He’s so shocked by what he hears that it takes a second for the rage to kick in. “What the fuck are you doing? Why the fuck are you in my house?”

He stands up gracefully, walking to the empty fireplace with his hands in his pockets. “I had no choice okay? I can’t walk sacred grounds anymore”

“Because you were murdered by a guy that’s been dead for years? How’s that going by the way?” he spits back, clenching his fist to hold back from shaking Stephen until answers fall out of him. 

He turns his head to the side, as if he wants to look at him but can’t. “I’ll be out of here as soon as I have money so please let me have this and leave”

“Justify all this and I will”

Stephen’s quiet for a while, it gives him time to notice how stiff he seems, like he’s willing himself to not even breathe. “I’m not the same as I was when you last saw me”

“Yea you’ve been spending too much time indoors. Are you hiding from someone? I can deal with it for you”

“The best you can do is leave me alone”

“No”

Stephen turns around abruptly with his pleading expression turned angry. He walks up to him until they’re nose to nose, as if he expected him to retreat. He’s not scared of much now, least of all Stephen. He is however unprepared to be slammed into the wall at lightning speed and seized by the throat.

“Go away” he snarls, spelling it out. His bright eyes almost pull Tony into them, they would have if he hadn’t noticed the hand around his neck is cold, and more notably steady. 

“What happened to you?” he whispers, not needing to because Stephen's grip is firm but not tight. 

“We’re different now”

He curls his flesh fingers around Stephen's wrist. “How are we different? Tell me” 

"You're not safe around me" It's a strange thing to say while using his thumb to caress his jaw.

Then Stephen breaks their gaze, becoming distracted by something beneath his chin. On the distraction he doesn't notice Tony feeling his pulse. 

He can't find it. He can't find it and Stephens pale and cold. The conclusion he arrives at is ridiculous.

Or he thought it was, because when he looks at Stephen his canines are fangs and he's getting closer. 

Not even thinking first, he crushes Stephen's wrist with his other hand until he let's go and shoves him away. Too shocked to move or stand, he lets himself slide until he's sat on the floor staring up at whatever Stephen is. 

He flexes his wrist, that's not even red, and sighs. His fangs retreat back to an illusion of normal teeth. 

"You- I- vampires exist?"

"Does it surprise you more or less than talking Racoons?" 

"I… don't know" 

"Listen," Stephen comes close once more and sinks to his knee so they're eye to eye. His pupils are so dark, his iris' imprintingly vibrant. Slowly everything goes dark, the blackest black he knows, and all he can see is a revolving wring of that piercing blue cycling over and over like a loading screen. He can still hear though, and he hears Stephens voice revolving around his brain in a round echo;

"You heard I was murdered, you went to my funeral, you helped carry my coffin and lower me into the ground, and that's all you saw of me. Goodbye Tony"


	3. Solar Eclipse

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "So Wong how are you doing? I know this must be hard, you were really quiet at the funeral" 
> 
> "Funeral?" 
> 
> "Yea Stephen's funeral, are a lot of your friends dying or something?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I quite like the dialogue in this chapter, hope you enjoy ;)

"Enough about P particles, how's the daughter?" Tony sticks his head out from under the roundtable in the comm room to grab some pliers and dig back into the wiring. Some things he has to do himself, a lot of classified information floats up from the table and he can't risk any mechanic planting a chip in it. 

"I wasn't ready to suddenly have a teenager but I have her so that's as much as I'll complain" Scott replies. He can hear his soft smile through his earpiece.

"Well if you need any pointers Peter is only a phone call away" he plucks out nanodisks from the storage pocket in his arm and uses the point light built into his wrist to see as he pushes them into place. 

"Yea Tony a teenage boy knows everything there is to know about a teenage girl"

"I don't know dude they have the teen part in common"

Someone clears their throat in the room. He pushes himself out of the tables interior to look up at Wong. "Hey man. There's an intercom you know" 

"What?" 

He directs his words back to Scott, "Sorry Wong just appeared"

"Oh hi Wong!"

"Scott says hi"

Wong frowns. "Who?" 

He rolls his eyes, using the table to get himself back on his feet. "Hey Scott I'll talk to you later"

"Later" 

"So Wong how are you doing? I know this must be hard, you were really quiet at the funeral" He leads the way into the living room, offering his guest a seat. The seat remains un sat in though.

"Funeral?" 

"Yea Stephen's funeral, are a lot of your friends dying or something?" It hurts to say it out loud, in truth he's still in denial about it all, it seems inconceivable that Stephen could just be killed and trapped in a box until there's nothing left of him. It gives him a horrible sinking feeling. 

"But you were going to see h- oh…"

"What?"

"Has anything strange happened in the past couple of days Tony?" Wong squints his eyes, looking him up and down like he's an intricate yet suspicious ornament on a shelf. 

"No more strange than my usual life, although I did have a weird dream last night" he remembers as he perches on the coffee table. 

It causes Wong to sit where he initially wanted him to, on the couch facing him. "About what?" 

He's perplexed why he would care, Wong hasn't ever taken much interest in him. "I was like inside water, it was very still and quiet, then it was as if someone pulled a big plug, I was spinning around and around in circles until I fell into this pitch black hole of nothing. Never had a dream like that, well, drowning yea but I wasn't really drowning in this-"  
He stops to frown at Wong when he presses his thumbs on his forehead.

Suddenly Wong is gone, suddenly there's no table or couch, suddenly there's no air and he's floating in water. Survival makes him find the direction to the surface and fight to get there, ignoring that he's swimming down to come up. And thankfully he does come up, breaking through and gulping down air. 

But it's not victory, gravity is curling it's fingers around him and pulling him out of the water in what feels like slow motion. When there's no water to hold him he falls, he cascades through the air, cuts through it like a meteor. Meteors have to collide and the collision point coming closer and closer by the second is a stone wall. He smashes into it and it propels a ripple of crushing pain through his skull, a pain that persists as gravity decides to squash him against the cracked wall as if it wants to flatten him like a bug. 

Everything's crushing; his skull closes in on his brain and his ribs suffocate his lungs. All he can hear over his rushing blood and breaking bones is the further cracking of the wall. Until it breaks, it falls apart and he shoots through it. The compound is on the other side, he lands right back where he was, smashing the empty glass next to him on the floor. 

While he's catching his breath and struggling for purchase in a world that isn't throwing him around like a toy, memories of the past two days wash into his mind and solidify. 

"I… how did I forget everything?"

"He erased it, one of his new abilities I presume"

Stephen got into his head. He got into his head and completely controlled it, replacing his memories with a fiction he thought for certain was truth. 

Ever since Wanda put that cursed vision in his head he swore he would never let his mind be touched again, yet it has, and by someone who was supposed to be on his side. It drives him insane, so much so he reaches under his clothes to unclip the reactor and attaches it on top so he can activate a suit he vowed not to use unless absolutely necessary.

"Tony before you go-" He's already strode off to find a place without a ceiling so Wong has to hurry after him. "Tell him he needs to contact me. Something is wrong about the new Sanctum master and I need his help"

He only nods over his shoulder before activating his thrusters and rocketing into the air, his mind as much of a missile as his body. 

When he lands in front of the house there's no knocking, no keys, no calls. There's the familiar whir of his repulsor blasting the door wide open.

Feet hurry down stairs and he retracts the suit so Stephen can see exactly what he feels in his eyes. Anger and betrayal. 

"Tony what the hell?" He comes closer, shielding his eyes from the light flooding through the doorway. 

His alloy fingers curl in the front of Stephens loose shirt and yank him very close, "you got inside my head" he practically growls, trying not to shake with rage. 

"I did it for you, you've had enough of titans and robots and inhumans for three lifetimes" he explains, holding his wrist, it doesn't make him let go.

"Exactly. I can handle it" he spells out, dragging Stephen even closer. He's not afraid to look him in the eye, he's ready for anything. 

"Let go of me, we can talk about this" 

As quickly as a reflex he throws Stephen against the desk, his back hits the edge and he ends up on the floor. It makes him more heated to see him looking up at him like he's crazy. "How dare you do that to me!? We were supposed to be on the same side" 

He slowly stands up, then backing away with his hands up in surrender, "We are, I thought I was doing the right thing" 

"The worst thing you could ever do to me is mess with my head" he holds his right palm out without even thinking about it. Before he can do anything more Stephen lunges at him. They struggle, Stephen tries to lock him down. He rips his arm free and elbows him in the face. When his pale hands grab his wrists he knees him in the stomach and with a feral growl Stephen shoves him away. 

He lands, the high pitch of glass shattering being enough to inform him he's broken through the coffee table. 

Slowly he sits up, finding glass in his palm and feeling the blood at a slash in his forearm. Tentatively he looks up at Stephen who hasn't moved, he's only staring. It's like the glass shattered the moment, the rage seems to dribble out of his cuts. He sighs the rest out. 

Reminding himself he's too old to be losing control and beating people up, he stands and heads to the sink. "Wong needs to speak to you, something about the new Sanctum master" 

It's an age before Stephen replies, "The Masters of the Mystic arts aren't my concern anymore" 

"Vampires aren't allowed in the club?" He winces when pinching the bits of glass out of his palm. More blood drips into the bottom of the sink and snakes into the drain.

"They're in the demonic creatures category. Definitely blacklisted." 

"Isn't the Order your life? Can't you just hear the guy out?" He twists around to see Stephen scratching the back of his head and shifting from one side to another like he's late for an engagement or due for the bathroom. 

He settles on leaning on a beam, arms crossed too tightly. "Humans are… difficult for me now"

"What?" He's turned around fully and curses when blood drips on the flooring. When he's running cool water over his cuts he puts it together. Humans are food for him now. 

Somehow that doesn't scare him, it gives him fuel. Sure Stephen did something terrible to him but he still trusts him just enough to torture him.

He faces him again, leaning back on the sink and smiling. "You know what Strange? I'm not leaving until you contact Wong"

Stephen stares disbelievingly, like he expects it all to be a bluff. "You can't do that"

He strolls into the living room, finding satisfaction when Stephen swallows. "Interesting you say that. Is this your house?"

"Tony I'm sorry" he looks away, running his hand through his hair. 

"You fuck with me, I fuck with you, it's just the balance of things buddy" he waves his arms around while he speaks, hoping pushes the smell of his blood further into the air around them.

Stephen seems to snap, he pushes past him in a decisive stride and after opening a few cupboards finds a first aid kit. He looks over pointedly, like it'll make him comply. Unmovingly, he continues smiling. 

He almost slams the box on the counter. "You know I could bite you right now, nothings stopping me"

Stephen is intimidating, his eyes are like a tigers in the night, completely alert and completely prepared to devour. However he knows to his core that while he might be different he's still Dr Stephen Strange, he still doesn't believe in hurting others, physically at least. "You won't"

Stephen vanishes and suddenly there's a presence behind him. "You have no idea how badly I want to" He whispers against his neck, every word glides against his skin and electrifies him. 

Then there are hands on his waist pushing him to the kitchen so when Stephen steps around him he can start disinfecting his wounds. He decides not to resist, just watch his hands work quickly. 

"You won't" 

Stephen stops, and the way he glares up at him is darker than black. He says nothing though, unravelling the band aid to use on his palm.

"Don't vampires have healing saliva?"

He raises a brow, looking slightly amused for the first time since everything changed. "Would you like me to lick your hand?" 

He runs the image of Stephen holding his hand up to his mouth, looking him in the eye as his tongue passes over it. It gives him chills. He’s not sure what kind of chills though. "Yea we aren't there yet"

Both brows go up. "Yet?"

"Hey I don't know how long I'm gonna be here" he shrugs.

Done with his palm, Stephen folds his arm up with his cold fingers to patch the gash on his forearm. "I bet you won't last 24 hours" 

He rolls his eyes at the pure idiocy he's hearing. There is nothing Tony Stark can't do when he decides to do it. "Please, I helped create time travel"

"Time travel already existed" Stephen mumbles.

"Sorry, man-made time travel" He corrects while Stephen arranges everything back into the med kit and stores it away. 

Nodding in thanks, he moves to the sofa and falls into it, just taking another moment to breathe, to catalogue everything that's happened, everything he's felt. He's still simmering at what Stephen did to him but he has his sentence, he's condemned to have him around all day for however many days he insists to sulk around like a brooding Edward Cullen. 

Looking at him doesn't draw so much comparison though, he's pale but not inhumanly pale, he still has scars and those grey streaks in his hair, he still talks and acts like Stephen.

"Hey when are we going to address the bat in the room?"

Socked feet make him soundless as he crosses the room, settling in the adjacent armchair with a sunken look about him. "I don't find this very funny"

"How do you find it?" 

He puffs out air and looks up to the beyond, "Well I'm dead for starters, I've lost everything, my home, my job, my 'people', I have to eat wild animals to stay standing and I can't go out in the day so I'm finding it really great" 

"Is there… any way of going back?" He cycles the possibilities, drawing on people he knows, assets he has and things he's seen. 

"No time stone and no real resurrection enchantment so no, this is me" 

He doesn't contest, all he could offer is the Avengers time machine but that wouldn't help Stephen of their current reality. 

"So your brother Victor is a vampire?" He assumes, as the man is the author of his 'murder', at least to his understanding. 

"I didn't know until the day he made me one"

"Please run me through all this"

"Ten years ago Victor was in a car accident. He was in a coma, but the condition was clearly terminal. I felt responsible for it all because the accident happened as a result of us arguing so I decided to use my contacts and have him cryogenically frozen, so maybe one day I or somebody else might be able to save him. Seeing him up and practically alive was… it's hard to put into words. Anyway, a vampire must have found him and changed him"

His first response is to just blink. "That is nuts Stephen, you know it is because I haven't even frozen anyone. Why did he turn you?"

"Punishment. The books make this look so glamorous, but I think I would have rathered he killed me the traditional way"

"You really think that?" He tries to put himself in Stephen's position, would he want a life after death?. The truth is the life he's living is a life after death, he was supposed to die when he snapped, yet when his eyes closed on a field of war they opened again, in a quiet hospital bed. He was reborn. 

"You and I will never go out for coffee at brunch again Tony. I won't ever walk the courts of Kamar-taj or meet new people, I'll have to watch the people I do know grow old and die while I live on and on without an end. I can't save the world before sunset. I'm a mosquito, I suck fucking blood and that's all." He rattles the hair on his head gruffly. 

"Why settle? Help Wong"

Yet again he groans, standing up and heading for the stairs. "Excuse me it's my bedtime"

"Cool I'll fix the door"

"You do that" with the look he's just been given he expects Stephen to stomp up the stairs but his ascension is soundless. 

As promised he fixes the door and uses it as a springboard for the rest of the day. He sweeps away the broken glass in the living room, orders groceries, calls the contractors and updates Wong on the current situation. 

When he's using the leaf blower at sunset he realises that it's really his life, his life is errands and little projects. There's no more CEO of Stark Industries, no more Avengers, no more gods and aliens, no more Iron Man. 

It's what he wanted, but he wanted it with a family. 

When he goes back inside he can hear movement upstairs, Stephen must be out of his slumber. He doesn't know what to do about him really, they seemed like they were forming something real. Now he doesn't know which way is up between them. 

His jumper has collected bits of nature so he pulls it over his head and it's when his arms are raised that he finds he really needs a shower. 

When he's half way up the stairs Stephen starts trotting down them, dressed in black looking like he's about to go out. He stops a step above him and wrinkles his nose. 

"Yes I'm going to shower" 

"And wear more clothes" he comments, sliding past him. 

He looks down at his tank top and wonders if layers really make a difference to his scent. 

Washed clean and dressed in a flannel and jeans like a true lakeside resident he heads back downstairs. Two bags of groceries sit on the kitchen counter, Stephen must have picked up the delivery. He's pretty hungry so he unpacks the bags and deliberates what he might eat.

His eyes find Stephen in the armchair once again. He's already looking back. 

"Do you eat any food?"

"No, don't worry I'm going out to find something in a bit" 

"What's out there?"

"Deer and fox" he sighs in reply, getting up and joining him in the kitchen. 

"I can't picture you munching on raw corpses" he muses back, chopping courgette now that he's decided on stir fry. 

"And I wish I didn't have to" he raises his hand and a portal opens, out of it floats his cloak. 

"No more ring?" He notices Stephen isn't wearing that gold bar he used to make portals, to think of it he also used to make a circular motion with his hands.

"Apparently I don't need to use rituals to engage my power anymore, I just have to think it and it happens" he shrugs while the cloak calmly settles on his shoulders.

"Real convenient. Any more spectacular tricks?" 

"The usual; speed, strength, stamina, hypnosis. I'm gonna go, I'll be back in 20" in a flourish of red he heads for the door. 

"Won't the cape alarm your breakfast?" 

"No we usually split up, it's quicker if it helps me" 

"That thing really loves you" 

Stephen snorts before disappearing into the night. 

Tony cooks, he eats while listening to the days news, and when he's done washing up and turns around the sight of Stephen in the armchair makes him gasp.

"Get used to it," he says, not looking up from his book. 

"Did you come in through a window?" He's sure he didn't hear the door. 

"Yea, didn't want you to see me with blood all over me" 

He dries his hand and goes over to stand by the fireplace. "I've always thought you rock red"

For the first time since Stephen changed he smiles at him. "Hey I'm sorry about what I did. I thought it would be better if you didn't know, I didn't think about the morality of my actions"

"And I'm sorry I attacked you, I know you meant well, I was mostly angry at myself for letting you get into my head" He's always thought of himself as guarded, clearly not enough. 

"It's not a sign of weakness that I did. A weaker man wouldn't ever be able to break the wall" he explains, smile turned knowing, like he himself witnessed what happened with Wong earlier in the day. 

He smiles and nods. Stephen nods back. He goes to the stairs and Stephen gets back to Monte Cristo. The air feels lighter in the house.


	4. Overcast

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I will strangle you" He threatens in that dark voice he has.
> 
> Tony steps forward, almost closing the gap between the two of them. "Go ahead, but I warn you, being strangled by tall attractive men is something I have a lot of practice with"

When he wakes that morning he has his coffee and grapes alone. By automation he wonders where Stephen is but by logic he realises that he has a nightwalker on his hands. 

After he's changed into a top and shorts to go out for a jog he leaves his room and looks down the hall to the second bedroom. The door is closed, he shouldn't entertain the thought, but this curiosity to see a vampire, to see Stephen sleep eats him. He's never been good at holding back on impulses. The room is pitch black, not a single crack of light allowed through the window, and that's it. It's just Stephen sleeping in a bed, not in a box face up with his arms crossed over his chest, just splayed over the bed like a regular person. 

He's out for a while, mostly jogging, sometimes walking to catch his breath and experience nature. Spending so much time around machines is great but the current of fresh air and the sight of sun splashing over the top of leaves is important to remember. 

It's not clear to him if it's the change of scenery but he decides not to call the contractors. He's approved the plans, he doesn't need to be so watchful over a process that's already in good hands. If they need him they'll call him, until then they are likely to enjoy him not breathing down their necks. 

Instead he decides to do something just for him, that being his work on prosthetics. After seeing how well they worked for Rhodey he had a mind to introduce them on the SI product line, but he never got around to finishing it all. So he freshens up and returns downstairs. With a cold coffee on his right and pistachios on his left he boots up his work table and pulls up all his schematics for arm braces. He's finished the leg ones, he had to to implement the tech on Rhodey, but the arms aren't quite finished. Even on a brace hands are complicated to configure, they articulate so much more than feet. Hands do everything from scratching a back to building a motorcycle, hands are the vehicle of creation and no one should ever be robbed of the chance to create. 

By the time the orange of the setting sun begins to fade he's done. Friday tells him he should eat but he has other plans, instead opening up a hologram of his new arm and taking it apart to see what he can do to turn what he has into an accessible attachment for those who need it.

"Still working?"

He spins around in his chair, not before jumping out of his skin. "What do you mean still?" 

"I woke up briefly 3 hours ago and heard you talking to Friday about motorised joints or something" Stephen glides up to the table and analyses what he's seeing. The blue holograms reflecting in his eyes just make them look even bluer, like the origin of the sky or the centre of his arc reactor. 

"Oh sorry"

"Do what you want, it's your house Tony"

He whistles at that. "Is this character development I hear?" 

"Oh be quiet" the corner of his mouth turns up slightly and in his books that is victory. 

"I like it, you're starting to sound more like yourself" He offers a genuine smile and to his surprise gets one back. Maybe that's the problem, Stephen believes he's lost himself, that who he was when he was human died. That's not true at all though, he's still the same Stephen that called him a douchebag, still the one that looks gorgeous when he laughs, and he plans to show him he's still alive. 

"What are you working on now?" He leans down, thoughtful with a thumb under his chin, fingers over mouth and index covering nostrils. He can't tell if he's just thinking or trying to block out Tonys smell. 

"This is the skeleton of my arm, I'm looking to condense it and use it for an arm accessible to a mass market."

"Oh interesting" he props his other hand on the edge of the table. Their arms brush ever so slightly. 

"Mr Stark, before you and the Doctor become too involved in the project I recommend you eat" Friday interrupts, sounding more short than she did the last time she asked him to do so. 

"Friday the genius mind has no time to-"

"All genius minds must be fed, trust me I know my stuff. I'll make you dinner, you continue" Stephen pats him on the shoulder and heads over to the kitchen.

"You don't have to do that" He calls after him. It's no use, he's already nosing around the fridge.

He tries to work while Stephen cooks, he really tries, but his attention is constantly torn. He'll glance over when something smells good, when anything so much as makes a clatter, when he's just curious to see Stephen cook. He doesn't seem like a fish out of water, calmly moving around the kitchen and keeping tabs on the frying pan and the salad he's making. It must be a liberation that he can cook without shaking hands, or maybe it's bittersweet, knowing cooking is of no use to him anymore. 

"Hey I'm done, where are you eating?" He asks him minutes later, holding a dish and a bowl. 

"The island is fine" He slides off his stool and ambles to the kitchen to see what he's been smelling, "This looks good thank you" he grabs cutlery and sits in front of the chicken and yellow rice with salad.

Stephen nods, and doesn't move from where he stands. Tony can see why, does he sit just to watch him eat or does he leave? 

"I feel bad, I need to- can I get…" he looks around him like the end of his sentence will materialise in thin air. He doesn't have bags of blood in the fridge or a dead wolf in the garage so he doesn't know what he can offer. 

He looks down at his bandaged hand on the counter and realises he does have something he can give Stephen, he can offer himself. 

Stephen holds up a finger before he can even decide to open his mouth. "Don't say It. There's plenty of food in the area"

"Bu-"

"No" he turns around and quickly starts to wash the dishes.

They don't talk while Stephen washes up, and when he's done and Tony's half way through his dinner he turns around to finally speak. 

"Who got into your head?"

"Huh?" 

"The look in your eyes when you got here… what you said yesterday… it's all I can assume" 

"You remember what I said about Thanos on the ship? Well about 10 years ago Wanda took control of my mind and showed me my worst fear, but it wasn't just my fear, it was a vision. The truth is it helped, it made me paranoid, it made me prepare, even if I was the only one. But that's the thing, it ruined me, people didn't believe me, it damaged my health, my relationship with Pepper, with Steve, just because of those few seconds I saw" 

"You resented being the 'chosen one'. You resented being the prophet" 

He nods at the wildly accurate summary. "It's scary how much you get me… wait, you get me because you've been me. I thought you were crazy when you gave up the stone for me, I resented you right up until you came back, but the whole time you knew it was what you had to do" listening to himself he realises he gets that feeling, he fought Steve because he knew he had to keep the Avengers afloat and Steve resented him until they all found out the hard way he was right. He and Stephen are a loop of parallels.

"Yea Tony I'm you but taller" Stephen learns in that moment that he isn't the only one with a death glare. "But you're right, oddly we're two sides of the same coin"

"Yes the dynamic duo; facial hair bros" he holds his fist up for a bump. 

Stephen crosses his arms. "What?"

"We have the same facial hair. Be honest, did you copy mine?" He wiggles his brows at him. 

"Of course not" 

"I know you did and that's okay, you pull it off"

Stephen cuts his eyes and pushes off the sink. "Despite what you may think you didn't invent the goatee" 

"Come on Stephen you go to the barber and ask for the Stark" he taunts back, eating his last piece of chicken smugly. 

"I shave it myself actually" he clips back. The triumphant expression he wears is cute but nobody can out quip Tony Stark. 

"With a picture of me in your bathroom for reference?" He grins at Stephen as he brings his plates to the sink.

"You wish I had a picture of you in my bathroom" he says, in a lower voice now that they're standing so close. 

He raises a questioning brow to go with his retort. "Because it's in your bedroom?" 

Stephen's smile is the devil. It's the face of defeat. "I will strangle you" He threatens in that dark voice he has.

Tony steps forward, almost closing the gap between the two of them. "Go ahead, but I warn you, being strangled by tall attractive men is something I have a lot of practice with"

He smirks, leaning forward, looming over him even more. They're so close, one bold movement away from something interesting. "Isn't everyone tall to you?" 

He smirks back, balancing on the edge of falling into those electric eyes. "Maybe, but not everyone is attractive" 

They stand there for an age, trapped in eachothers gazes. The moment has an intense heat around it. A magnetic heat. He just wants to dive into him and swim.

Then Stephen presses his lips together, looks down in what might be defeat, and breaks the charged silence with a murmur, "should we look at your work?" 

"Yea let's look at my work" he doesn't move right away and neither does Stephen. He wonders what that means for them both. He realises that what he's feeling is that pull he's felt towards Stephen from the moment they met, that intensity they've never lacked between them, that tension. 

He's the first to break away, circling the island and leading the way to the work table with that tension sitting in his gut.

It would only be a guess to give a name to what Stephen's feeling, one minute he can't look away and the next he's got distance between them, asking about elbow joints and keeping his eyes fixed on the work. He has that pull too, but there's a push.

They work until 3am, until they're both losing focus at relentless speeds. He's becoming tired and Stephen is becoming hungry. He didn't need to be told, it's clear, when he speaks the wizard's focus falls below his eyes and his replies are disjointed, like he isn't really listening. 

He taps the power off and all the projections shrink to nothing, leaving only the yellowish hue of a lamp to light the whole space. "You go find lunch, I'm gonna hit the sheets" 

Stephen nods. With shoes on and cloak close behind, he opens the door. Bright eyes look back for a moment before the door clicks closed.

Now alone, he absently rubs his neck. When his fingers catch his pulse he stops. He thinks about the blood pumping within him, about the heat of his skin, about the focus of Stephen's attention for the past two or three hours.

It's clear he wants his blood, but does he want to give it to him? He knows Stephen wouldn't kill him, and even if it hurt he hardly knows pain anymore.

Would he surrender himself to him? 

-

The next day he's up and about. It's much hotter than yesterday so he takes a chair out by the lake and sits in nothing but shorts hoping to get some kind of tan. He's out there too long, working through the display in his glasses and taking calls, most being from friends asking where he disappeared to, some business. 

Once his skin is well scorched and the sun is dropping from it's peak he goes back inside, throws together couscous, puts it in a bowl, and goes out to the porch to eat. 

The low sun beams into his eyes and he taps his glasses to activate the UV lens. The orange lines it casts over his chest remind him of the way the sun sat on Stephen's skin when they went to get coffee, the way it brought out the gold in his eyes. 

He thinks of him now, a man always and forever backdropped by darkness, always cold to the touch and frost like in the eyes.

He can feel the tension that was in his gut, now across his shoulders. Is that tension sexual? Is that what pulled him to Stephen? A desire to have him?

He figures maybe he can get rid of the tension with sheer force so he leaves his bowl on the table and gets a good grip on the top of the door frame. 

It's hard to decide whether to force thoughts of Stephen into a bolted box or let them flourish. Nothings stopping him, for once there's no conflict of interest, no politics, no love triangle, no stakes, if he wanted to he could see where that goes, where Stephen wants it to go.

He also knows though that Stephen has gone through a change, one he couldn't imagine, and he needs to rediscover who he is, and maybe having him like that, like more than a friend will only stunt that.

On the 11th pull up, when he's lowering, he feels the tear in his palm before the sting of it. "Shit" Red begins to dot his bandage and on unravelling it he finds that he has in fact ripped his larger cut open. 

At the same time he steps inside a body appears in front of him in a flash. He startles, stumbling back onto the porch. Stephens looking him up and down slowly, with a set jaw and dark eyes. 

Immediately he feels bad. He's broken a bit of a sweat, he's bleeding and he's one pair of pool shorts away from naked. Unknowingly he's probably activated every one of Stephens predatory instincts. 

And he looks like a predator, he looks like he's ready to pounce, like he would if he didn't have so much self restraint. His pupils are so blown.

"Call Wong" he says, turning around and disappearing into the house. 

"I'm sorry?" He follows him in, surprised by what he's hearing. 

"You heard me Tony. I'll get involved. Call him now" he commands, pacing the room. 

"Okay. Awesome. I didn't do this on purpose by the way" he says as he rushes to the sink and washes away the blood collecting in his palm. 

He hears the pacing stop and turns to meet Stephens tired eyes. "Tony I'm a new vampire. Every second with you near me is a nightmare. I can't take it anymore"

He stares, opens his mouth for nothing to come out. Stephen taps his foot at a pace that makes him anxious.

When he slams his fist on the dining room table he jumps a little. "Call Wong!" He barks.

"Friday"

"Calling Wong"

His work table powers up, projecting Wong's contact card and spinning it slowly as ringing fills the house. 

"Tony what the hell have you been doing? It's been three days!" He hisses.

"Stephen is hard to persuade but I always get results, you've got him on the line" with that he breezes past Stephen, decisively not looking at him, and fishes out the aid kit to deal with his hand.

"Its Master Alia, her aura is poisoned" 

Tony snorts. Wong sent him to convince Stephen to get off his ass just to tell him a woman gives him bad vibes. 

Stephen however isn't as amused, rather he steps closer to the table with intrigue. "What do you mean?" 

"Stephen, something is with her. If we don't find out what it is it could be catastrophic for the Order" Wong explains. It's then Tony stops smiling and pays real attention, clearly it all isn't some horoscope junk.

"This is why I wasn't interested. I'm dead to the Order" 

"And I wish that weren't the case. This issue might be internal, the council might have selected her because it's become corrupt with a malignant force. I cannot trust anyone"

Stephen crosses his arms and looks out the windows to the fading colours of the sky. "Fine. What do you want me to do? I can't walk the grounds." 

"Just meet with her, see what I saw, help me understand it"

"She's supposed to think I'm actually dead" he points out. 

"I can meet her," Tony interjects. He's met her once already, he can do it again.

Stephen looks at him disbelievingly. "Under what pretence Tony?"

All bandaged, he crosses into the living room. "Maybe I want her advice on protective enchantments for the compound rebuild"

That has Stephen's expression changing to thoughtful. "That's not bad actually… she needs an incentive though"

Wong pipes up; "I'll provide it, I'll tell her we promised it to you before Stephen died. We take promises seriously here" 

"Okay that's the plan. I'll go back to my upstate house. Wong tell me when it's going to happen, Stephen can find a hiding place in the compound, I'll meet the two of you and we'll do a tour. Would that work?"

"I don't see why not" Wong says. 

He looks over at Stephen, analysing. "Stephen will you be okay? It's likely going to be during the day"

"Yes I don't burst into flames" he informs with a neat eye roll. 

"And can you stay undetected?" Wong asks. 

"On a construction sight? Course. Isn't Alia blind anyway?" 

"Yes but she feels forces of presence and movement" Wong explains. 

"I won't be close enough for her to feel me"

"Thank you both. Await my call" that's the last of Wong, he ends the call. 

The two of them are quiet for a moment, watching eachother on the dim light of the day.   
"Tony are you sure you want to be part of this?"

"I was the moment Wong got me my memory back" when Stephen only nods back he kicks himself into gear, "I'm going to head out then" he jogs upstairs, puts on a top and retrieves a communication disk out of the fancy compartment in his wardrobe.

When he's back downstairs he finds Stephen in the same position, watching his every move. "Here, wear this behind your ear, for when we do it, to communicate with me if need be" he hands him the communication device. Their fingers brush and Stephen is so cold.

He looks at the small thing in his hand like he's never seen anything like it. "Okay" 

Again they hover, both not wanting the first to speak, or move. It's different now though, Stephen can't cope with his presence, the band aid needs to be ripped.   
"Alright, well, I'm off, take care of the house will you?" 

"Just like that?" Stephen says when he has his hand on the door.

He looks back, smiling sympathetically at a reflection of himself. "I'm gonna miss it too"

He gives him a lost look. "Miss what?" 

"Forgetting the feeling of being alone"


	5. Fog

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Gee I can't breathe through all the PHD's in here- Stephen where has that outfit been my whole life?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they actually leave the house lmao

Ringing wakes him at the convenient time of 1pm the very day after he and Tony spoke to Wong. Not hindered by the pitch darkness in the room, he reaches for his phone.

"Stephen be at the sanctum in an hour, less if you want more time to scout the area" Tony's voice says through the speakers. He's glad to hear it, before he had time to miss it.

"Alright Tony, be careful" he says back, voice raw from sleep. 

"Oh no is she gonna attack me? I don't wanna hurt a blind woman"

"Bye" he makes sure the call is cut before he chuckles. There was a time Tony's humour and comments got under his skin, a time when he wanted to grab him by the throat and shake him because Thanos was coming and he was making jokes. Then he gave his speech on the ship, and asked him if he concurred, and he realised Tony did know pain, he knew pain and responsibility and despite his fear he was ready to save the world.

He learnt how true that was when he saw those countless realities, so countless but all sharing one variable; Tony never did a selfish thing. He never ran, or hid, or pushed another in front to take the fire. Sometimes he made bad decisions and people died, but he never had any other intention than saving as many people as he could.

Stephen rolls out of bed and to the bathroom. It's not true what they say about mirrors, when he looks in it his reflection looks back. Sometimes he wishes it didn't, he wishes he didn't have to see what he's become; white as can be with eyes so bright they could light the way in a blackout. He looks unnatural.

Parking aside his grudge against himself, he freshens up, all in preparation to put his new suit in action.

It all starts with the Eye, it may be empty in their reality but it's still just as good at carrying enchantments. He presses the amulet to his bare chest, just below his collarbones, and with glowing amber edges fabric burns over him. It reminds him of the first time he watched Tony's nanosuit spread over him in the most elegant display of technology he had ever seen.

Soon he's covered in black spandex, with white plating over his chest and down the valley of his ribcage. He's more comfortable in his usual robes, that's the first thing he remembers as he stands in skin-tight black, but the new suit blocks out all types of radiation and that's something he needs more than ever. 

Descending the stairs, he tries on confidence, the straight spine and high chin he's used to. He's dangerous, there's no need for him to be worried about people seeing too much, they should be busy looking in the ice blue eyes of a threat. 

At the foot of the stairs he looks at Tony's work table, powered off and alone. But his mind takes him back to two days prior, when the man was sitting there mumbling notes to his AI and editing and processing information where it floated before him. That night he stood for a while to watch before he made his presence known, it was interesting to see Tony work, to have a private view of that fascinating brain. He used to constantly feel like the smartest man in a room but looking at Tony was like finally touching ground. 

"Hey it's time to go" he says to the cloak where it sits watching a fireplace with no fire. It floats up and toward him, when he takes it by the collar and swings it on it clips to the Eye and gold edges burn down it's length as the collar grows higher until the points surpass the top of his head. 

When he and Wong enchanted the new outfit it's almost like they did it knowing his fate, he steps outside and the sun barely touches him, only bothers his eyes with its brightness. 

Off the porch and away from the house, he makes a large sweeping motion to reveal the edge of the mirror dimension. He bursts through it and flies. 

The sun feels scorching on his forehead but he doesn't have the heart to mind, he loves flying. Cutting through air above the trees and buildings feels like a breath of fresh air after days underground. 

Some time later he sees the compound grounds, they stand out, a lot of the land still being cratered. Repairs are underway though, as he lowers construction workers in high vis become larger, they have a few cranes up, trucks and smaller automated vehicles moving materials from A to B. 

He lands on the roof of the main building and crosses it until he finds a section unbuilt. There's a lot of nothing at the top of the building but as he lowers a living space reveals itself, adjacent to a lab and connected to a kitchen. 

He breaks through the mirror dimension, settles at the lab's entrance and plucks that device Tony gave him from his pocket dimension, pressing it behind his ear and finding it stays there. Tony didn't tell him how to use it so he just tries tapping,  
"Tony. You there?"

"Wong and Alia will be at the compound in thirty. I'm five minutes away. Where are you?" It's alarming that Tony's voice sounds like it's inside his head. 

"In front of the lab in the main building"

"Wait for me inside" 

He hears a beep and turns to see the lab doors sliding open. 

The place is huge, with a station seemingly for everything. There are shelves with materials on them, glass cabinets with intriguing objects within them, a closed off room with a bed in it, surrounded by machines, a round desk with computer consoles on it, even a modern sofa next to what looks like an indoor garden. 

There's a coffee table in front of the sofa, it has a massive mug on it and a blank tablet. He touches the cup, the tea is still warm. Peering behind his shoulder first, he picks up the tablet awkwardly, it being the size of a small television. It flicks on and the top corner lists 'Dr Banner'. That explains the size. 

A few apps appear on screen and the one called 'logs' catches his eye. If there's anything he wants to rob it's Banner's knowledge. 

A list comes up, ordered by most recently accessed, after 2 names he doesn't recognise is Tony’s. It just says 'Tony'. Of course he goes into it straight away. 

Two sub categories; physical eval and physiological eval. He dips into physical first, just to make sure he doesn't have any ailments he doesn't know about, to his relief that's not the case. 

The physc log is a lot more content full though, he scrolls to the earliest entry, two days after Thanos was defeated;

[ Tony has been awake for 4 hours. He is surprised he's alive ]

He's sucked into reading them all;

[ Arm amputated this morning. Tony had no emotional reaction ]

[ Tony and I have been working on a replacement arm, he has become more like himself ]

[ We attended Natasha's funeral. On the journey home Tony told me he doesn't understand why he lived and she didn't ]

[ Tony has tasked himself with rebuilding the compound. I conclude his compulsion to always have a task is to repress thoughts of guilt and post traumatic stress ]

[ Dock point and skeleton for new arm installed. Nerve attachment indicated high levels of pain. Tony was numb to it mostly ]

[ Retirement is making him restless. Assumption is that he fears his continued existence is purpoless, being separated and no longer Iron Man ]

[ No signs of destructive behaviour, Tony hasn't fallen back to alcohol or extreme recklessness ]

He hears footsteps, heavy ones. Not Tony. He puts the tablet back as he found it and staggers to the conservatory, cloaking himself in the mirror dimension. 

Bruce, as he expected, rounds the corner. He's holding a sandwich that must be at least 12 layers in his large green hand. 

He doesn't sit down. He starts eating his sandwich and stares, at him, but he knows he can't see him so he's not sure what's happening. 

"Stephen I know you're here" 

That's concerning considering his role in the mission is staying unseen. 

"I'm not bluffing, Friday has lab access logs, I saw you on camera"

He reveals himself. They watch each other for a long moment. 

"Why were you looking at Tony's evaluation?"

"Why did you make it?" 

"You might have seen the five years, but I lived them. He's been through absolute shit and I'm worried" 

"Well that's why I was looking, I wanted to know he was okay" 

"And what do you conclude?"

"That he's not"

The lab door makes a sliding sound again and it's him.

"Gee I can't breathe through all the PHD's in here- Stephen where has that outfit been my whole life?" 

He resists the urge to wrap the cloak around him, instead remembering his confidence, staying unflinching. Thank god he can't blush anymore because the way Tony's looking at him makes him feel it. 

"Why is he even here?" 

"Mystical stuff, shall we?" He gestures for Stephen to lead the way, and he does, nodding to Bruce as a farewell. 

"Tony you're retired!" The doctor calls as they go. 

"If anyone asks you didn't see Stephen!" He calls back with that dazzling smile. 

They walk the vast space, it's new, he can smell the materials behind the walls. Tony is watching him quietly, intently, it's static down his spine.

"Alright?"

"I'm thinking we need a change of strategy, with the sight of you the demon inside her might just step out to ask for your courtship" he considers, very seriously. 

He can't stop his smile for the life of him. "Stop it" barely an hour ago he didn't like his suit because it drew attention, but he hadn't considered Tony's attention. Maybe it could be his permanent choice. 

"What do you think we're gonna find?" 

"In the Master? It could be a variety of things; a festering of pain from her past, a dark creature living in the corners if her spirit, dark magic, an inhuman part of her-"

"Can you see auras too?" Tony's eyes are bright and curious, like they often are. He likes them that way, very much, because he's seen them in pain. 

"In the Astral plane I can, otherwise I can feel peoples general auras if I'm close enough" 

"What does mine feel like?" Tony stops and he follows suit, turning to face him.

He takes a deep breath, letting Tony’s aura blanket over him. It makes him smile. "It gives me a… warm comforting feeling, like hot chocolate or when the sun is that perfect moment before hot" 

That seems to confuse him. "But doesn't a person's aura reflect their whole life?" 

"Yes" he doesn't need to know the mystic arts to get the feeling from Tony. He's all warm, in eyes, skin, smile, laugh and life. Everything about him makes Stephen want to huddle close and expel the cold from his bones.

"I've spent a lot of it doing terrible things" He admits in a whisper. 

"Then the good things you've done must have outweighed the bad" 

"Or you're picking up my body heat not my aura" He chuckles.

He wants to comfort him, to tell him he can accept himself to be the good man he is, but he's Stephen and his wit has always been too quick. "I can distinguish the two just fine"

Again he watches Tony flush, so slightly. It makes him giddy to see it, to smell the blood and appreciate how inexplicably gorgeous he is.

It has bugged him though, since Tony turned up at the lab, that he smells strong, not his blood but his cologne. It's a nice smell, it's just excessive, more than his usual. 

Tony smirks and pivots to continue their journey and he follows a half step behind, remembering what he said the night before. It was true, Tony is a walking nightmare to him, but he shouldn't have used that word, implied that he didn't want him around, because he'd be a fool to say he didn't. As awful as the analogy is, Tony is like being choked during sex. He's stifled and overwhelmed by him but he enjoys the torture, he wants it. 

Tony glances at the watch on his flesh wrist. "Okay big boy it's time to disappear"

"In a puff of smoke I go" Tony gives him an amused look. He indulges it, stepping back bowing, casting a small smoke bomb at his feet and shooting up into the scaffolding above. 

Tony looks up and they meet eyes. He bursts out laughing, doubling over and slapping his knee as it fades to a wheeze. He straightens, shakes his head up at him, and continues on to the entrance with a red and gold thumbs up trailing above him. 

Stephen conceals himself and takes a moment to enjoy it all. He thought being a vampire was the end, that he wouldn't really be living, but maybe it's not that bad. 

He watches from high up as Tony paces by the entrance, in wait for Wong. His pacing turns into him having what looks like a concert in his head, nodding, humming a tune, occasionally adding lyrics to it, twirling rather than just pivoting when he changes direction. 

It's cute, and it makes him wonder if Bruce's analysis is wrong or if Tony still finds the small joys in life despite his demons. It's the second, but he would rather it was the first, that Tony was happy and didn't have to see so much death and destruction in his life.

He ends his concert abruptly, stepping out of the building with open arms. He returns shortly with Wong and Alia behind him. He's already in full swing, explaining and gesturing around, sure to keep it at their eye level. 

So he does his job, he observes from the safety of the mirror dimension. Alia's expression is passive, just looking at her face is no indication of her feelings. 

When the three of them turn into the main lobby he hears something, beyond the plane of usual sound, on a different, echoing layer to Tony's explanation of the compound's layout. It's a whisper, smooth like the movement of a snake. He focuses on that and really strains. 

As if he's fallen into an invisible bubble he can suddenly hear her, the woman whispering inside Alias head, a foreign presence, one that shouldn't be there, like a rat in a pharmacy. 

'Fate reunites us with Stark' the voice comments, a touch amused and an echoed hiss. 'Is it not a sign? And opportunity?'

He frowns as he slips between poles and under planks, an opportunity for what? 

Tony takes them through the lounge space and into the labs, explaining it's the area that needs the most protection. He's chatting enthusiastically about some of the lab's features, likely not because he thinks she would be interested but to take up all her attention, making her less inclined to spot onlookers waiting for the woman in her head to speak.

Alia walks out of his field of vision so he lands softly on the other side of the glass and wills it to give way so he can watch her as she walks up to the garden. She faces the trees and plants, her pale hands clasped behind her back, when he hears it again.

'There's a sprout of a tree too stubborn to grow. Might we say it's because Stark isn't equipped to make life grow? Might we say he stunts life? Might we say he's a burden to life itself?'

The voice wants to turn Alia against Tony, the question is why, and how easily does it convince?

'And Wong, such an allie of Starks, might he be just as stifling as him?'

Alia abruptly turns back to Tony and Wong, offering suggestions on circles and enchantments. Stephen can't read her and it panics him, he can't tell if she's completely ignored the whispers or if she'll draw a glowing blade and end them both. He doesn't like it.

"Tony wrap it up quick" he murmurs, finger pressed the disk behind his ear. Tony makes no visible signal of having heard him, and technology across the mirror dimension is unpredictable, but then he asks his guests to follow him out.

The voice is silent. It is until the three of them are outside. Wong has opened a portal and Alia bows to Tony. When she straightens it speaks;

'Something must be done about them both' 

Tony walks back into the compound and he doesn't reveal himself as he follows. He's in something of a shock. When Wong said her aura was bad he hadn't imagined she had another presence literally whispering it's influence, and he hadn't imagined the influence would try to push her to get rid of Tony and Wong. 

Tony collapses into the couch in the lounge in a sprawled mass and that's when he steps out of the mirror dimension. Tony doesn't jump this time.

"So? She possessed?" He asks, closing his eyes. 

"It's more complicated than that" that has Tony sitting forward, frown very present.

A portal then sparks to life in the room and Stephen tenses for the moment before he sees it's Wong. "Well? Did you pick anything up?" 

Stephen expected Tony to ask that. "What? You surely heard her too"

Wong completes the triangle of frowns. "Heard what?"

"It can't be that I can and you can't" he says to himself mostly, the mirror dimension must have been the affecting variable. 

"Well he can't so do tell" Tony snaps him out of his speculation. 

"A woman whispers things to her"

Wong sits on the arm of the couch Tony occupies. "What kind of things?" 

"I think she was nudging her to off you both?"

Tony makes a face, confusion before fear, very in character. "Kill us? For what?" 

"I don't know, and I don't like that I don't know" he admits.

"What we need to ask is how did the voice get there and who is she?" Wong rightly says.

"No human can find a home in another's mind, she must be one of us, or a god, possibly an alien. Alia must have bargained" he adds, starting to pace.

"Sounds like we need a comprehensive background check. Only the important stuff Friday" Tony leans back and watches hologram information shoot out of a ring at the centre of the coffee table. 

"She attended one of Xaviers schools for the gifted, during her time there she was involved in a murder investigation. Should I continue?" 

Tony leans forward again. "Involved how?" 

"It seems a close friend was accused of murdering a girl in their class. She testified as a witness" 

"Show me the case files" 

A bunch of panels show up and Tony quickly arranges them in a readable fashion. Stephen strides behind the couch to read with the two of them. The killer, Bella Darke, was found guilty for murder, Alia testified that she told her she did it.

Tony sighs. "You guys ever been to the Raft?" 

-

The Raft isn't somewhere one can open a portal to and wander around, they go in Tony's helicopter.

"How often do you come here?" He yells over the thundering sound of the vehicle, few things are so loud. 

He's not sure why he used to think that because Tony is a billionaire that everything was done for him, therefore he didn't have a wide range of skills. Clearly he didn't understand that Tony's defining feature is hardly his money, but his genius. At heart and soul and hands he's a mechanic, he builds anything from time machines to car engines, he can drive a car and fly a helicopter, he built the first arc reactor in a cave. He can do anything.

"This is like my third time, three too many I would say" he calls back, tilting the helicopter to the right for a tight turn. Stephen holds on to the nearest steady thing as they lower onto the landing pad. 

When they step out onto the pad they're greeted by a woman with oddly perfect and very bouncy strawberry blonde curls, she leads them down into the prison that's nothing but the Mary Poppins bag of vastness. The elevator they take only goes down 3 layers of the hexagonal structure and they're led into a corridor lined with cells. Nothing interesting is really happening, no uprisings or murders, just prisoners in dull colours staring at them, or sitting, or focused on a puzzle box. He didn't expect somewhere infamus like the Raft to be so still. 

The woman stops them at a cell, within is a girl with hair like the blackest of nights. She's facing away, sat at a table by her bed seemingly just thinking.

"Here she is. I'll be at the end of the corridor, touch the glass anywhere to establish communication" the woman strides off in the direction she came, her boots the only noise he can hear. 

Tony props his hand on the glass, "Bella" 

The girl turns around, she can't be more than 25 years old but she's as pale as he is and the underneath of her eyes is black, like she rubbed her fingers on charcoal and dragged them there. 

She clearly recognises Tony, and approaches the glass with a half smile, "What's this? Are the Avengers getting desperate?" She says mockingly.

"We're here to ask you about Alia" Tony says softly.

"She killed that girl" she says, voice low and deadly serious. 

"Thought so" Stephen murmurs. The case against the girl was weak, they decided it was her before any proceedings, with the nature of her abilities evil is what she's labelled as.

"Why did she kill the girl Bella?" Tony asks.

She breathes out something relieved, she has a nice smile. "I can't believe it, you believe me"

"You were locked up by idiots. I'm sorry about that" Tony replies.

"Idiots is too polite Mr Stark," she leans against the glass, "She did it because her only power was sensing force, surrounded by other kids that had greater powers she wanted more. The girl she killed could move things with her mind."

"Murdering someone doesn't just give you their power" Wong deliberates.

"I thought so too. After she did it she told me she knew it would work, I don't know if she knew it would make her blind in both eyes, serves her right" she smiles at that small victory.

Tony takes his hand off the glass. "She might have been influenced then"

Wong nods, "Maybe it was a lure, the thing in her head targeted weak people who wanted something badly and gave it to them for a price. Now she's bound for life with the voice" 

Bella is watching them closely, likely trying to figure out their purpose. Stephen touches the glass. "Was she different after the killing? Other than the lost eye" 

"Yea I could feel a darkness in her… Like you" her gaze changes, like she's looking at someone familiar. 

"Me?" He has a darkness in him? 

"You have death in you, a dead man walking, she had death in her too, just not so completely" She touches the glass where he is, like it might give her a window to his mind. He takes his hand away. She's right, he's exactly a dead man walking, repelled by the sun and fuelled by blood that isn't his. 

"Thank you Bella" Tony smiles.

"Wait! Can't you get me out of here?" 

"You're here because you killed a man in your previous prison. There's nothing I can do for you" He takes his hand away, nodding at the angry woman and leading the way back down the hall.

"So, it seems we need to find out what she made a deal with" Wong says as they get closer to their escort. 

Tony turns back to them with a glint in his eyes, the face of a man with a plan. "You know who knows a lot about these things?"

"Wong?" Stephen guesses, even though it was Wong that posed the dilemma. The man gives him a look that echoes that. 

"I forget you two aren't Avengers, we need to make a call off world"


	6. Starless Sky

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Why did you get him involved!?" 
> 
> "If you hadn't locked yourself away I wouldn't have had to, and I couldn't go to you, I didn't know how corrupted the Order might be" 
> 
> "You couldn't find anybody else?" 
> 
> "There is no one else Stephen! Tony is your weakness!"

Having the best tech isn't enough when it comes to calling off-world. Thor and the guardian's could be anywhere in the universe, years away, somewhere time is completely upside down. So when he asks Friday to open a line to the Guardians ship it stays open for an hour, then four, then ten.

It's the dead of night when he's sharply woken by all his lights turning on and an incessant beeping.

"The ship is on the line sir" Friday says when he sits up. That knocks all the fatigue and disorientation out of him, he springs out of bed with no time to put his arm on and grabs a silk robe thrown over a chair to dash down the stairs. 

"Friday contact Stephen and Wong and tell them to come to this address" he says, slipping his arm in the robe and fumbling with the sash with his one hand.

Friday's already converted his dining room table into his workstation and he swipes on the surface to answer the call in the same motion that he sits down.

Rocket's little form shows up on the projected screen. "Buddy! Good to see ya- oh no where's the arm?" 

"I have a shiny new one upstairs"

"Well I'll have to see that sometime" he rubs his little hands together like a fly. 

A portal opens by the front door and Stephen steps into the room wearing the usual black; a turtleneck and loose pants. 

Overly aware that he fell out of bed and looks that way, he pulls up the falling sleeve of his armless shoulder and pats whatever hairs he probably has sticking up on the back of his head.

Stephen takes a fairly unsubtle moment just to look at him before he closes the portal and comes closer. "Hey did you catch Thor?" 

"Hopefully, is Thor around Rocket?" 

"Somewhere, Thor get in here!" He yells far too loud, at least it kicks the last bit of tired right out of him.

There's a flash behind him and he jumps, twisting around to face Wong in a large t-shirt and baggy shorts with hearts on them. He's given him a racing heart for nothing.

"Oh it's the raccoon" He observes over his shoulder. 

In the background of the projection a man appears, Thor himself, looking much less round and much more bulky "What is the matter here? Tony!" He picks Rocket up like a bedtime toy and smiles brightly at him. It's a warm feeling to know people are happy to see him, it used to be something rare.

"Hey Thor how's guardianship treating you?" 

"It's fascinating, such odd things exist outside of our nine realms"

"You are holding one of them" Wong observes. Rocket growls.

"Haha! What can I help you men with?" 

"We need that wise mind you have" he says, noting Stephen takes a seat where the camera can't see him. It makes him a little sad to think he doesn't want to be seen, just like when he first found him at the lake house, he didn't want him to know his new form, so much so he wiped his damn memory. 

"It's on the matter of bargains, specially those that involve doing something bad for power and being stuck with a voice in your head" Wong explains. 

"Many creatures offer such condemnation, in fact it's a trademark in the underworld" Thor answers, putting Rocket down. Tony almost groans, it would be nice to deal with a Mandarin or Vanko type again, it's all gotten too absurd and dangerous. 

A blue head pokes into the frame. "What are you fools do- Tony"

"Hey Neb how are you?" If she were in the room he would hug her, he misses his favourite emotionally stunted girl very much. 

"Putting up with these… individuals is trying"

He chuckles at that. "Once you've been in space with Tony Stark nothing compares does it?" 

Stephen snorts.

Maybe there's a connection, he realises that Nebula and Stephen are people he has an understanding with, a profound one, and he's been aloft in space with both of them.

"I see you lost your arm" she notes.

"I have a metal one now, we should make it a club" Nebula's arm was damaged and he had it seen to that it was fixed, she requested the red and gold plating, it was a warming gesture.

"Our hand shake might be too loud"

Thor laughs, "Good point there. Anyway, what did this voice say?" 

"It seems to want to kill me and Wong. I'm not sure why" he says. Maybe he should be afraid. Fear seems not to control him so much, there is always something out there that wants to kill him; a robot, an alien, a colleague. 

"What did you do to hear the voice?" Another voice contributes, then Nebula's sister steps into the frame.

"Stephen was the only one that did" Wong tells her.

"Is it at all possible that Stephen has a strong connection to the afterlife?" Nebula asks, glancing at her sister. They know something. 

"You could say that" He says when Stephen doesn't speak up.

Nebula turns to Gamora, "It's got to be her"

Wong steps closer, so they're side by side. "Who?" 

"Death herself" Gamora looks at them gravely, her words feel grave, nothing is more so than death. 

"I- what?"

"The goddess Death. She and our… father had a sort of romance" Nebula explains.

"Of course Thanos would bone over literal Death" he can't help but roll his eyes. Then he realises what he's hearing; the goddess of Death, the ruler of the underworld, wants to kill him. 

"It's not a secret that you defeated him Tony, she probably wants vengeance" 

"If the goddess if death wanted me dead wouldn't I, well, be dead?" He asks. Technically he should be more of a dead man walking than Stephen is. He debates whether he should be worried that none of what he's hearing scares him, it might be because he already feels like he's cheated death too many times. 

"She can't kill so easily, she must do it through Earthly means, such as a host body. The host body can have the power to take life but not the omniscience of a god, it won't just appear before you and give you the touch of death so to speak" Gamora explains. The other three guardians look absolutely concerned. 

But not as much as Stephen does. He stands up and takes his place behind him, looking zeroed in to the task at hand and nothing else. "Is Alia the host then?" 

"She might be, she might not. I would suggest not going near her, for your safety" Thor says. 

He nods, understanding the events of yesterday were a much bigger risk than any of them knew. "I can do that"

"Can you tell us anything else?" Stephen asks. 

"You are practitioners of the Mystic arts correct? Use them, they are invaluable to this task" Thor supplies. 

Nebula looks at her shipmates, "Maybe we should go to Earth"

"Don't worry about us" he insists. If death is focused on him and his circle he doesn't want to add people to it.

"Good because we're weeks away" Rocket laments gruffly. 

"I'll reconnect with some people Tony, see if they know any information about her" Thor assures.

"Thanks, all of you"

Gamora wanders off and Tony talks to the remaining three for a while; insisting he'll be fine, exchanging stories of the weeks after Thanos, talking tech and eventually having to let them return to their duties. 

The screen dissolves and he catalogues his surroundings, Wong is very at home, making tea in the kitchen, and Stephens sat at the end of the table again, looking like he's barely containing anger for some reason. 

He presses underneath the table, causing the workstation panel to retract and tuck itself underneath, leaving a regular white table in its place. "All good Stephen?" 

He's completely ignored, Stephen continues staring at the wall ahead of him like it killed his family.

Wong comes back with three mugs, one hovering in the air. When he puts one in front of Stephen he slams his fist on the table hard enough for the hot liquid to lurch out of two of the mugs and splat on the table's surface. 

"Why did you have to get him involved?" He grits out, looking up at Wong with a fire in his eyes. 

Wong looks as perplexed as Tony feels. "What?" 

Stephen looks at his clasped hands. "Tony could be living his life, away from this, why did you have to insist he be involved?" 

So that's what he means. He hadn't noticed that technically it was the Orders problem to start with, he slipped back into the motion of investigating and stopping what must be stopped so easily. Only now do they know he's more involved than they all thought.

"Death has a personal vendetta against him you idiot" Wong spits before he has time to tell Stephen to chill. 

"He stood next to her, he spent time with her" he says almost too quietly to be heard. 

"Hey-"

"Why did you get him involved!?" Stephen bursts, he slaps his hand on the table and stands to tower over Wong, erasing Tony's existence.

"If you hadn't locked yourself away I wouldn't have had to, and I couldn't go to you, I didn't know how corrupted the Order might be" Wong spells out, still level headed but clearly on the verge of knocking Stephen in the head. He needs it, he's being ridiculous. Yes he was in danger, but he's with them, he's alive, and now they have the information to work smarter. 

"You couldn't find anybody else?" He asks Wong like he's talking to a child. He never expected him to talk to him like that, they've always had too much respect for eachother to do so.

And clearly it has an effect on Wong, he explodes in Stephens face, "There is no one else Stephen! Tony is your weakness!" 

The house is quiet for a moment that feels like eternity. 

He's Stephen's weakness, what does that even mean? Should he be flattered or worried? 

"What?" Stephen says, a delicate question out into the air around them.

"Look at yourself! He's alive, right here, and you're losing your mind at the possibility that something could have happened to him. We aren't in that timeline, so stop embarrassing yourself and look forward, to what we can do to fix this!" 

Stephen has no comeback to that, he stares at Wong, frozen in place, then he turns his head and their eyes meet. The gaze is a weight on his heart, a vacuum of questions unanswered, then Stephen disappears.

Wong huffs out his frustration, "I'll be in contact tomorrow, I suggest you stay indoors" and with that he's gone through a portal.

He's alone to process what just happened. Stephen cares about him, he's certain now, there was nothing false about his anger. But he cares too much and that worries him, because he cares about Stephen too. 

"Sir Dr Strange is on the roof" 

"Thanks Fri" he goes to pick up their mugs but Stephens is gone, so he just takes his, sipping it as we walks up the stairs and into his bedroom. 

His arm is waiting for him, displayed in the centre of his walk in wardrobe. He puts the mug on the display and presses his fingers to the glass to make it slide open. Putting the arm on is simple, it clicks magnetically to the dock embedded on the stump that is his right shoulder and does the rest of the work itself, establishing the nerve link and closing the open plating around the skeleton. He rolls his fingers, as is habit when he puts his arm on, and picks his mug back up to continue to the attic.

He's still not used go the reality of having one arm, he's a big gesturer, he's known for gesturing a lot when he speaks, so in moments like the one just passed, when he's not wearing his arm for a while, he notices the imbalance, the need to gesture with two hands instead of one. And it's frustrating, one appreciates two arms when one realises how much it makes a difference. His robe still isn't tied properly from his poor attempt to do it with one hand.

Conveniently he has a mechanically opening panel on his roof, for those situations in which he might need to fly, far and few between now. 

Tea left on the floor, he points his palm down and let's the repulsor give him a little boost through the space. He lands ungracefully and a little painfully on his knee but that doesn't make the figure sitting on the roof react. 

Stephen’s sitting looking out to a sky with barely a star, mug hovering next to him losing all its heat to the light breeze. Tony’s severely underdressed, he pulls his robe closer together and wishes he was wearing shoes. 

“You know Steph I can take care of myself” he tells him, gently, because he knows the man doesn't think he’s something fragile.

Tony sits next to him, strategically so the silk doesn’t cause him to slide off the roof. Stephen keeps looking at the black horizon. His eyes take in none of that darkness, they absorb only the lights of buildings and houses over the field. “I know I just- I can’t watch you die again”

“What do you mean?”

Stephen looks at him and his crystal eyes are all pain. “Thousands of futures and this is the only one you lived in. I watched you die over and over, too many times, enough for lifetimes. If you died on me- us…”

“Well we’ll have to try to avoid that” he offers an assuring smile, resting flesh palm over Stephen's cold scarred hand. There’s an electricity to it 

“If only you and death weren’t a moth and a flame” he sighs. 

He’s not wrong and that makes Tony giggle, when he likely shouldn't, “She probably does find me dashing, I can’t blame her”

Stephen isn’t amused by his joke in the slightest, “True or not, it doesn’t matter, I’m going to kill her”

“You can’t kill death” he's yet again the only one laughing.

“There’s no harm in trying”

“So much for the Hippocratic oath” he says, hoping that'll get a rise out of Stephen. It doesn't, he continues looking ahead like a man on a mission.

Nobody has ever wanted to protect him like Stephen does. Rhodey might be a close contender, damning the name of anybody who tried to touch him, but he's never exploded with rage at the possibility that something could have happened to him in the past, he's never looked so afraid at the thought of losing him. Only Stephen.

He finally moves, standing up and offering a hand to help Tony do the same. “Hey you should get some sleep," he takes his metal hand too, holding them both in the narrow space between them, "I’ll be watching over you”

He's almost too charmed by him to deliver his snarky remark, “If that’s code for ‘I’m going to watch you sleep from the dark corner of your bedroom’ please give me a heads up”

Stephen smirks, finally amused by something, and vanishes, leaving him alone with the memory.

He looks at his hands, both are so different but both felt Stephens cool skin, both long to feel it again. 

All of him longs for Stephen.

-

It's a new day and once again it's sunny in New York, waiting in traffic Tony watches as people walk the street in t-shirts, carrying ice cream or drinks. He never really got to know what it's like to just walk on the street like they do, buying stall food and yelling at his kids not to run into the road. He can't even get from his car to a building without at least being looked at by everyone near enough to identify him, it'll likely happen when he parks at the diner for lunch with Bruce and Scott. It's different too, the looking, before he was perfect in a sense, he was Iron Man, he had two arms and no visible scars. Now his hair’s lighter, his skin’s looser, half his face looks like it was doused in lava. Now he's retired and just floats from here to there, trying to understand what it is to live a normal life. 

He takes a left and it puts him in front of the sanctum. It reminds him of that sunny day he came to find Stephen, saw him stripped down to casual, saw him as he was when danger wasn't constantly around them. That feels like an era passed, now it's a sunless sky, a different body. Stephens lost his normal too.

They say it only takes a moment, less than a second. Maybe if he weren't distracted by the Sanctum he would have seen it, it wouldn't be the smashing of metal and screech of tires that alerted him to the car headed straight for his.

The right window explodes. The world spins as his car flips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah... I'm the biggest slut for cliffhangers


	7. Blood Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "I mean come on, his car landed on the sanctum stairs"
> 
> "It did?" 
> 
> "When are you gonna get your head out of Stark's ass and pay attention? It has to be a sign"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Remember when I said eventual smut?

At first Stephens annoyed that he can be woken up by the slightest of sound, the intake of breath, the smell of blood. He slept terribly when Tony was staying with him. However when he wakes up to Wong standing at the bedroom door with a grim expression on his face annoyance isn't his first reaction. 

"Have you seen the news?" 

He doesn't waste a second, reaching for the thin remote on the bedside table and bringing the tv on the far wall to life. He only ever uses the news channel so it hits him like a truck.

" -date on the breaking news, for those who are just tuning in for the day, just over an hour ago world renowned hero Tony Stark was involved in a car accident in Greenwich Village, Manhattan. His car was destroyed by a side collision of an out of control vehicle" 

He doesn't need to breathe to live but he feels like he's suffocating. The tv switches from the news reader to an aerial shot of Tony's orange Audi, it's upside down, smashed against a building, smoke billowing out of it, there's broken glass on the road.

He almost snaps the remote in half waiting to hear the rest of the report. Tony needs to be okay, alive. He needs to be alive. 

"Mr Stark is in a stable condition in hospital. Doctors say his Iron Man suit deployed in time to protect him from any major injury, they expect he won't have to stay the night."

Instantly he feels light enough to float away, but resting easy isn't an option jet, he never does when it comes to Tony. "Which hospital?" 

"I'm just coming from there. He's not awake yet, suffered a concussion" 

"Lets go" 

He follows Wong through a portal into the private wing of Metro General. He used to walk the halls like he owned them but now it's so bright he would shrink away, if he didn't have a singular focus.

Up ahead on one of the couches dotted down the wide hall he spots the unmistakable Bruce Banner. He looks solemn, deep in thought, probably thinking the same thing he is, that Tony has suffered so much yet he only suffers more. 

When they're near enough Bruce stands, he says something to them, Stephen hears but doesn't listen. Nothing can stop him from seeing Tony and nothing does, he strides into the room and only stops at his bedside. 

He looks little more than asleep, his expression calm, his blood flow steady, the rise and fall of his chest a calming thing to see. Other than small cuts on the sides of his face he's fine and that makes him exhale and smile. 

"Dr Strange right?" 

He glances across the bed to see a man sitting in a chair watching him cautiously. It's Colonel Rhodes, after so many futures there isn't a face he doesn't recognise. "Do I call you Rhodes?" 

He doesn't look very impressed as he sets his StarkPad on his lap. "Yeah I'll live with that. Who put you on Tony's emergency contact list?"

"We've recently been… working together" he says, because he can't just tell the man the truth, that Tony is everything he cares about.

Rhodes looks at Tony, his expression melting to fond. "You really can't stay retired can you?" 

Stephen waits for Tony to crack an eye open and come out with some witty response but it doesn't happen, he stays asleep.

Tony's so pretty, always pretty, always striking. Even with his big whiskey coloured eyes closed he's still enthralling to look at. He doesn't ever want to stop.

"I gotta say last time I saw you you weren't so pale, are you feeling okay?" Rhodey inquires. 

He keeps calm, returning a level gaze. "The last time you saw me we were fighting Thanos"

It's a blessing how easy it is for him to hide his true nature, his fangs retract, he's not quite white enough for it to be unrealistic, he can make people forget and the sun doesn't cause him to burst into flames. The perfect vail to keep the existence of vampires a myth. 

"Good point, skin tones were probably the last thing I was noticing, especially with you and your… magic" He waves his arms in the air in a poor imitation of whatever it is he's trying to imitate. 

"We draw power from other dimensions" Wong corrects behind him.

"Just call it magic Wong" Tony groans out.

All three of them rush to his side and watch in utter silence as he adjusts to the light and slowly looks around him like he's just been brought into the world.

"I was hit by a car right? Please tell me I still have my one arm" he lifts his left arm and nods approvingly at its existence. The nodding makes him wince. 

"You shouldn't move your head" he tells him.

Tony stares at him like he wants to learn the details of his face, then his eyes narrow with thought, "Stephen is the sun still up? wh-"

"Yeah it is, you haven't been out long, thank god for nanotech right?" He smiles at Tony, hoping his brain will come back online quick enough to read the room. 

Rhodes shakes his head at his friend. "Tony how did you manage this? You fought Thanos and lived but that chick outside hit you with her car and you're in hospital? Come on dude" 

"What chick?" 

"Yea what chick?" Tony concurs. 

Rhodey sighs and leans out of the door to signal for someone to come in. A girl responds to the call, walking into the room like one of them might pull a gun on her. He doesn't know her from anywhere, he would remember such flame red hair.

"How are you Mr Stark?" She asks in a mousey voice. 

He props himself up on his metal elbow and frowns at her, "Who are you?" 

"Chandler, Bruce's friend" she points behind her at Bruce who's carefully trying to squeeze through the door. 

"And you hit me? Damn the world is small" 

Stephen feels hot in a way that shouldn't be possible, "You? You totalled Tony's car?" 

In a burst she runs to Tony's bedside, "I'm here to apologize! This girl ran into the road and I swerved out the way and before I could break I was nose deep in an orange Audi" 

Stephen can't help but snort. "His car flipped over. How fast were you going?" 

"They said his tires caught on the curb and that made it flip" Bruce says. Stephen almost snaps at him, tells him a curb is barely anything, then he realises that the room is nauseating him. He hasn't been around so many people since he changed and the smell of their blood is intertwined and drowning the room. Trying to ignore it is giving him a growing headache. 

"Alright now, everyone's fine, I don't need your insurance money Chandler, you get some points on your licence and we move on, I have too many Audis anyway" Tony sighs as he props up his pillow. 

"Really? That's it?" 

The look Tony gives him is irritated, he doesn't like it. "What am I supposed to do Stephen? Take all her money and set her house on fire?" 

He's right again, what has happened has happened and there's only forward. But how many more times will it be until there is no forward?

"Stephen, can I talk to you in the hall?" Wong hooks his wide fingers in his elbow and pulls his hesitant body out of the room. He wants to stay with Tony.

"Everything alright?" He glances between Wong and the slowly closing door. 

Wong pushes him into the mirror dimension. It's convenient, he can dim all the light in the hall. "You're thinking what I'm thinking right?"

"If you're thinking you're hungry then yea" his fangs ache, like they're screaming to be let loose and buried in flesh to feed on warm rich blood. 

Wong makes a face, "God no," he lowers his voice, "I don't think the accident was much of an accident"

Oh.

"You think it was Death?" 

"I mean come on, his car landed on the sanctum stairs"

"It did?" 

"When are you gonna get your head out of Stark's ass and pay attention? It has to be a sign, or Alia spotted him outside the window and made the girl lose control of the car."

It could be true, easily. He knows the roads outside the sanctum, they're wide and the speed limit on them is far too low to cause that much damage to his car. That collision was pure force. 

"If that's true she could do anything, she could make a tree fall on him or crash a plane into his house" as he speaks the words they horrify him. He wants to go back to Tony. Anything could happen, Bruce could lose control, an IV drip could be contaminated, the very foundations of the hospital could crumble down. Anything could happen. 

"My thoughts exactly. I would say he's safer on our grounds but…"

"Alia. Right. So what do we do?" He almost rips his hair out pushing his fingers through it. It shouldn't be so hard for Tony to finally be at peace, like he deserves.

"I was thinking he should go back to the cabin with you"

"Oh go-"

"I know it's difficult for you but you're already, well, dead. She can't kill a dead guy with a falling tree right?"

"No I know, it's the right move, I was just mentally preparing" he would be more frustrated if he couldn't keep a close eye on Tony, but he's still going to be thoroughly frustrated having him back in the same house. Something about Tony makes it too hard not to touch. Well, he knows what it is, there are a few reasons. 

"Well now we have to ask him" 

They go back into the room and both of them take the hive decision to sit on the chairs in the corner and not contribute much to conversation. He's personally too busy trying to repress his instincts, and the act of denying the sweet allure of the room wears him out to the point of sleep. 

He's next aware when the intense smell of blood wills him to be. He opens his eyes to see a wrist right under his nose and when his fangs shoot out he's very awake.

Wong snatches his wrist away with a curse. 

"Sorry, reflex" while he stabilizes his eager body he looks around him. Tony isn't in the bed any more, instead standing next to Wong watching him. There's nobody else in the room. "How long have I been asleep?" 

"Almost 5 hours. They discharged me. Can we stop at my upstate house? I need to pick up some stuff" 

"Did… did you already ask him?" Wong nods, "Oh well I'm glad you agreed" he offers Tony a lazy smile and he gets a bright one back. That and his eyes are the only bright things he wouldn't ever shrink away from. 

Tony extends a hand and he uses it to get himself standing. It's warm, almost hot, he wants it to touch him everywhere, until he's warm too. 

When they get to the cabin it's still and dark, just how he likes it.

"You haven't broken anything have you? It'll come out of your security" Tony turns the lamp next to the armchair on and does a quick glance around the house. 

Correction, he likes the lamp on, it brings out the caramel of Tony's skin. 

"Alright, I'm gonna make noodles, you're gonna pick a movie and we're going to try not to die" he declares, dropping his bag on the work table and striding to the kitchen, ingredients in hand. 

"Shouldn't we be planning how to not die?" 

Tony dumps the stuff on the counter and looks up at him. "Stephen I was in a car accident, give me the day off?" He pouts, puppy dog eyes and all.

It's almost annoying that it actually works on him. "Fine" 

He ends up choosing Gatsby. Netflix recommended it and Stephen likes the soundtrack. He pauses at the opening titles and settles down. Tony's noodles smell good, like prawn and soya and black bean, but he smells better, like a child's favourite treat, like a freshly baked pastry, like a little metal but a lot of joy. 

The smells get closer until the couch shifts. He looks over at Tony, bowl in one hand, chopsticks in the other, toying with the noodles to dissipate the heat. His hoodie slides off his shoulder, revealing the scarred seam between man and machine. The arm is a perfect match to him.

"Oo Gatsby, I love this movie. Play" he leans into the couch and tucks his foot under him to watch. 

They're not sitting that close but it's still too close. It's close enough to feel his heat and god the smell is overpowering. He's so hungry, why is he so hungry? Maybe being up and about during the day takes more out of him than he thought.

It's 15 minutes before he's bouncing his leg and inches away from ripping a couch cushion with his nails. 

Tony looks over at him and it isn't a glance like the last few times, this time he stares, frowning. "What is up with you?" 

He shoves out of the couch like it's burned him and almost runs for the door. "I need to eat. Continue watching if you want" 

"Wait" 

"I'm not going far, I can be back in a second if anything goes wrong" he flicks his wrist and a portal opens so the cloak can come to him from the upstairs bedroom.

"No it's not that it's… I'm here" 

He almost doesn't catch it, but when he looks in Tony's eyes and sees tender determination he understands.

"I think I know what you're saying and I don't think I like it"

"If we're going to live together, even if it's just a few days, I think coming to an arrangement would be good" He says cautiously, putting his almost finished food down and watching him. 

All his instincts sway him toward Tony but he wills his feet to stay planted. "I've never bitten a human, for all I know I could kill you" 

Tony's brow goes up and he smirks like it's funny. "Who are you looking at? If my life becomes threatened I'll do something about it" 

Stephen may not have experience but he's read a lot, he knows he won't kill Tony unless he wants to, he knows his blood could replenish his strengths if he were to go to overboard, but he also knows about the pheromones, and the addictive nature of feeding, not just on the feeder but fed on. It's territory he doesn't have control of and that's concerning. 

But he would be a filthy liar if he told himself it was territory he didn't want to explore, he wants to explore it all, from Tony's lips to the inside of his thighs, he wants to know what it all tastes like, his blood, his skin, his mouth, his sweat. 

He's sitting on the couch again, without any knowledge of asking his body to do so.

"My judgement is extremely clouded and that's the only reason I'm not arguing more, so I'm going to ask you, are you sure you want me to feed from you?" He would cringe at the words if he wasn't salivating at the sight in front of him. 

Tony laughs, "I would love to take your human meal virginity Stephen"

"You're an idiot" he almost growls, drawn closer to him until their legs touch, until he can feel the soft breeze of Tony's breath against his lips and count his long beautiful lashes. 

He smiles, "I guess that makes us two idiots in a pod" 

Stephens hand comes up to cup the rough skin on Tony's face, his fingers dip into his hair and his palm rests over hot pulsing skin."I'll let that awful analogy go" he's transfixed in every way he possibly could be, he can't look away and he can't think of anything but the taste he's about to get, about how good he knows it's going to be. 

"Well I should proposition you more often, it makes you malleable" Tony murmurs, tipping his head slightly when Stephen directs it to.

Fangs lurch out but he's not so hasty when he lowers his mouth to Tony's neck, his bare neck ready to be marked by his teeth and claimed. He breathes deep through his nose and closes his eyes to just let the effects run through him, it makes him shiver with anticipation.

When he pierces skin Tony only twitches, he doesn't let his muscles tense up as if he knows that would be worse for them both. Then Stephen inches back just enough for his teeth to exit the wound and clamps his mouth over the punctures. The first drops explode on his tongue and are electricity inside him. The rest that comes is the same, it's all intense and all wonderful and he needs more. 

Tony let's a muffled moan out and if he could swallow that too he would, instead he holds him tighter and yanks him closer by the hoodie so he can drink more. He's never felt anything like it, it's like a climax drawn out for as long as he wants it, always at that perfect back arching toe curling peak.

But all climaxes need to end, and he forces himself to remember that, to let go, to lick Tony's wound until all the blood is gone.

He feels alive again. 

"Stephen" Tony gasps like he's broken the water's surface. His pupils are huge and his hands find purchase on him, like if he let's go he'll drown.

Stephen wants to kiss him so badly.

As if he robbed the thought from his brain Tony closes the strip of distance between them and presses their lips together in one impulsive kiss. 

Tony sways back and they do nothing but stare at each other for a moment. He doesn't just want to kiss Tony, again, he wants all of him, everything, he wants to rip his clothes apart and drag his fingers over every inch of hot skin until it's all his and nobody else's. 

Tony swoops in again and this time Stephens ready, eager even, he presses Tony against him until even air can't fit between them and finally tastes his mouth, kissing him in a messy rush of suppressed desires and pure fire. Tony eases them back until Stephens laid on the couch and when the movement dislodged them he wastes barely a second to reconnect their mouths.

Passion wraps around them as they kiss like they've lost a thousand kisses, he slips his hand under Tony's clothes to grab flesh so hot it burns, and he loves it. He loves it all so much, god, he loves him. 

He loves Tony. 

Suddenly the burn stings. He pushes at Tony's chest until there's space between them.

"You okay?" 

"We- my bite releases pheromones, we shouldn't do this, they're influencing you" He holds Tony by the shoulders and sits them both up. He needs distance, he cant be so close to Tony, so tempted to throw his heart to the wind and anchor onto him once more. He stands up. 

Tony's big eyes look up into his. "What if that's not what's influencing me?" 

"Don't… just- for me. I, you know this, you matter to me in a way nobody ever has, I can't do anything, I can't do no strings attached with you. Everything is attached, when it comes to you" He’s struggling to think straight, blood is making him buzz and his feelings are clawing out of his core. 

Tony looks shocked, he drags a hand down his face and addresses him seriously, "Did I mention this was no strings attached at any point or do you just like jumping to conclusions?"

"I'm just saying that if you wanted something casual I can't give it to you, not when I feel so… so much for you" He can’t believe he’s really confessing so much, but he’s thought for a while, since they got coffee an age ago, that he’s been obvious about it. How could he not be? The things he loves about Tony are too many to hide. 

Tony stands up and sizes both his wrists before he can step away. "Stephen when I'm not with you I think of you, when I'm with you I want to be near you. You're not just a hookup to me, I was drawn to you from day one and every moment with you makes me want you more, like really want you, all of you" 

Reality shifts in front of his eyes. He’s so used to being the observer, to watching the Tony of timelines live. Some of those Tony’s loved Pepper, some their child too. He’s watched a few fall for Steve, or his best friend Bucky, even T’challa, Carol, Quill and Nebula, but not him. He thought it was a sign, that Tony, regardless of reality, would never feel anything for him, that he would have to watch him love somebody else.

But in this reality he isn't an observer, and this reality is the only one where they won. It’s unique, so something unique could really blossom between the two of them. 

"You… you have no idea how happy that makes me"

Tony grins and throws his arms over Stephens shoulders, "Well I'm glad it does, I like your smile. Now, please kiss me" 

He takes Tony gently by the chin and spends a moment just looking at him. He’s so beautiful, and he’s here, in front of him, trusting him. When he brings them together again it's a slow kiss, loaded with appreciation and happiness and anything else he can give. He would give the moon and the stars if Tony asked. 

It’s not long until things aren't so slow, until the fire sparks back to life fuelled by intense want and the greed for more. He has Tony pressed flush against him but he wants more, he has cool fingers tugging lightly at his hair but he wants more, he slips his own hands under Tony's clothes and up his back but he wants more. He’s faintly aware they’re stumbling backward, and when the back of his ankles hit a stair and he tumbles down the edges of the rest pressing on his back are a faint whisper compared to Tony on top of him, unzipping his fleece and kissing down the length of his neck.

Just Tony’s breath against his collar bone sends electricity all the way through him, and then he mouths his way back up, until he stops on the spot Stephen bit him on his neck and does just that, bite him. He’s never been so hard in his life. 

He grips Tony underneath his thighs and lifts them both up to press him into the wall and kiss him within an inch of his life. Tony’s legs slip from his waist to his hips and it’s an accidental miracle. Stephen grinds against him and Tony moans, gripping the hair behind his head hard enough to pry their mouths apart. He bumps his forehead against the wall, the side of his face pressed against the warm scarred skin of Tony’s, and does it again, and again, and soon they're rutting against each other like animals. 

He has to stop, because he knows for certain if he doesn’t he’ll cum in his pants. It’s hard to commit to the decision when Tony whines at the loss of stimulus. 

“Take me upstairs I need you to fuck me”

He doesn’t have to be told twice, with only a thought he transports them from the stairs to Tony’s bedroom. The loss of a wall makes him fall back onto the bed and it gives Stephen a wonderful view. Tony's flushed, tousled and bulging at the crotch, just ready to be taken apart piece by piece. 

He smirks, “I said fuck me not stare”

It must be clear in his eyes how much he wants to consume him, in every way he can. 

He kneels onto the bed, “It’s not my fault you're divine” he murmurs, watching his pale fingers drag down Tony’s zip.

Tony wriggles out of the Shield hoodie and Stephen gathers up his tank top, revealing toned stomach and a scarred chest adorned by the arc reactor. He runs his hands up his stomach and stops at the edge of his ribcage to continue with his mouth, kissing over every bone on his left side and passing his tongue over his nipple. Tony sighs a heavenly sound and takes grip of his shoulder.

"Is this coming along for the ride?" He taps the glowing power source next to his face. It doesn't matter to him either way, afterall it saved Tony's life only hours ago, it's saved it time and time again. 

Tony considers it, then, "No, let me just…" he grabs onto it with his flesh fingers and after a second it unclasps, he carefully rests it on the nightstand. Finally he discovers what's under it, it's a metal plate, the same triangular shape as the reactor, with two dips on each end probably for it to hook in. He wonders if it was painful to install into his skin like that, traces the damaged skin around the edges. 

"It used to be a hole. It's easier now that it isn't" 

He looks up into Tony's solemn eyes, "So brave" the bravest person he'll ever know.

"And so hard" He emphasises.

Stephen laughs, retreating back and hooking his fingers in Tony's waistband. He very much enjoys revealing more of Tony, seeing his lean body in nothing but boxers. The tent in those boxers draws him like a magnet, he rubs his palm over it and Tony makes a muffled sound, lurching to grab and tug at his clothes. He receives the message and transports them from his body to the floor. 

He knows what he wants to do next and he gets to it, pulling off Tony's underwear and appreciating what was hidden underneath it. He appreciates it with more than his eyes though, taking the base of Tony's length in his hand and lowering until his lips touch the tip. Maybe it's because they're cold but Tony jerks violently, gathering the crimson bed sheet in his fists. 

Stephen smirks. Desperate to get more out of Tony he licks up the length not blocked by his hand and takes the tip in his mouth. He's almost tasted everything he can from Tony and that's exhilarating. 

It's been a very long time since he was last with a man but pure enthusiasm and fractions of memories have him bobbing up and down, using his tongue in ways that pull beautiful sounds out of Tony. He learns that he no longer has a gag reflex, and that really works wonders in driving Tony mad. 

"Fuck Stephen slow down- I'm gonna finish, slow down" he breathes. The hand in Stephen's hair is torn between pulling and pushing. 

He makes the decision for him, pulling off and using his hand so he can kiss his inner thigh. It smells amazing, he can feel the rushing blood under his lips and he slips his hand down his boxers to distract himself from wanting to sink his teeth in.

"Bite me again" Tony gasps. 

Stephens distantly shocked at how little hesitation he takes before sinking his fangs deep into Tony's soft thigh. It goes away quickly though, when Tony's moaning loud and blood makes him even more elated and delirious than he already is.

Both of them are completely falling apart. Stephen knows he's going to hit that sweet peak at any second, the build up and Tony's blood have turned his mind to complete fog.

He picks up speed and his eyes almost spin when he finishes. The pleasure drags, he keeps his mouth attached to Tony as he jolts through it, cumming into his hand. 

As soon as he settles into bliss he wants to give it to Tony too, he licks his wound closed and laps up any delicious blood on his lips so he can fill his mouth with a different part of Tony once more. It doesn't take much before his back arches off of the bed and his voice lodges in his throat as he fills Stephen's mouth. 

He watches every moment, until Tony settles with a long exhale and smiles softly at the ceiling. 

A similar smile takes occupancy on his face as he slips into the en suite to wash his hands and gargle water in his mouth. He doubts Tony wants to taste that much of himself next time he kisses him. 

Tony's sprawled out on the bed, gloriously naked and looking satisfied. He joins him, laying face up next to him. He feels satisfied too, very much so, since he changed he hasn't felt truly full like this.

"Hey I know I should say something romantic right now but I have to ask, what do you cum if you're dead?" 

He shrugs, "Dead sperm?" The books didn't go into details about that one. 

"But why is there even sperm- how does your junk even work?" He leans up on his elbow to look at him, Stephen can see in his eyes his brain is going 100 miles per hour.

"I read vampires are evolved to perform sexually in order to subdue human prey" 

Tony mock gasps, slapping his hand over the metal on his chest to cause a clash. "So you took advantage of me?" 

He turns on his side and smiles at the centre of his universe. "I couldn't even if I wanted to" with the way he feels about Tony everything is a gift. 

Tony turns onto his side too, his metal fingers reach out to trace the veins along his wrist. "I think it scares me, how much you care"

Stephen catches that hand and holds it tight. "It should make you feel safe, I'll take all the bullets for you"

"That's what scares me," Tony says, so quietly. 

"Don't worry bullets can't kill me" he winks. It doesn't negate that he would burn in the sun for him, or take silver to the heart. 

"Did it hurt, seeing all those futures of me and then disappearing for 5 years?"

"I wasn't aware in that time, but when I could feel myself falling away it broke my heart that I would leave you for so many years" he knew what was going to happen, he saw Tony lose Peter, then Pepper, and spend so much time alone, with all his friends scattered across the globe and galaxy. If he had survived the blip he would have been there for him, even if that meant watching him from afar.

Tony smiles, a little sadly. "Maybe it's for the best, if I had your sweet ass around I would have been too distracted to figure out time hopping."

"Even my sweet ass wouldn't have stopped you" Stephen runs his hand over Tony's waist and settles it on his even greater ass to take a commanding hold. 

"True, my intelligence knows no bounds"

He grins, and moves closer until they're nose to nose. "Cocky" the hand on Tony's ass wanders down and in between his legs, finding it's hole and brushing against it. 

Tony jolts, "Stephen!" 

"What? Aren't you ready to go again?" He plants a long kiss on Tony's lips. 

"I'm 50 years old, your terrible for my health"

"You don't look a day over 30" he says, his words floating into Tony's ajar mouth.

"Your lies turn me on" Tony lodges their lips back together and he takes that as encouragement to continue what he was doing. He doesn't rush it, it's a long period of infinite kissing before he's two fingers in, working Tony and paying close attention to every sound and movement he makes. 

When Tony's ready, and he's begging for it, Stephen lubes them up and settles between Tony's legs. He knows it's just in his head but he feels like he's burning up, like if it were possible he'd be pouring sweat. He's about to be inside Tony Stark, the only man that matters. They're about to be bonded as closely as they physically can. 

He takes Tony's flesh hand and holds it tight. He doesn't look away from his rich brown eyes for a second as he closes the gap. With a kiss he swallows the cut off moan Tony makes and exhales the weight of the world when he's all the way in. It's too much, he almost can't hold himself together at how much. He's completely surrounded by the only thing he wants to be surrounded by. 

They don't let go of each others hands while they do what can only be described as making love. To him it feels like his favourite love song, like they're sharing every secret in a series of comforting whispers, like without words he's spelling out just how overpowering his love is. 

He loves Tony, so much.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Authors note:   
> While editing I found the dialog on this last part kina cliché but I remembered what I was thinking when I wrote it, that I want this Tony and this Stephen to be poetry.


	8. Supernova

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Why do you want to be human so badly? It’s awful, just look at me as an example, I’m damaged and graying and I’m missing an arm and my back hurts, all the time.”
> 
> “Tony you are probably one of the best examples of the beauty of humanity”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I edited this on my phone so sorry if it's a mess :(

When he wakes up Tony's pleasantly cool, Stephen's arm and leg draped over him explains it. 

Stephen's always so serious, so sharp and precise, but when he looks over at him he's got a cheek squished into the pillow and his mouth hanging open. It makes Tony smile. 

He knows what Stephen looks like when his heart aches, and when it sings, and he knows the way he's completely disarmed and bewitched when he looks at him. He doesn't deserve Stephen, that's for sure. 

When he slips away from Stephen's limbs the man turns onto his back with an incoherent but cute grumble. Unable to stop smiling, he awkwardly pushes off the bed with his one arm. The smile is gone, replaced by a wince, his shoulders are all in knots and the base of his spine is almost screaming. He took his body for granted when he was a sprity 20-something. 

Having to attach his arm, then the reactor, makes him feel like a cyborg. Which, by definition of the word, he is. When he steps into the shower he considers the logistics of replacing his spine with tech. Really he could fortify his entire body, if he just installed nanotech into his bones. He could be a supersoldier, busting bad guys at the age of 90. 

It's an awful thought. 

Clean and dry, he walks back into the dark bedroom and navigates as quietly as he can, putting his black tank top back on and snatching up joggers from his wardrobe. He's just done putting them on when the bed shifts;

"Where are you going?" If Stephens voice wasn't deep enough already it's even deeper when he's sleepy. 

"Downstairs. Go back to sleep" he whispers back. Yesterday might have ended on an undeniable high but it was a weird, taxing day. 

"No, come back to bed" He almost whines. It's too cute. 

"I'm just gonna grab a snack, I won't leave the house, be back in a bit" He leans over to kiss Stephens jaw.

"If you do leave the house I will… be very angry"

"Oh no I'm so scared!" He can't resist kissing him again, on his plush lips, before he pads out of the room.

It feels good to open the blinds and let natural light fill the house, all the darkness is getting to him. 

Feeling fresh, he toasts a bagel, brews a coffee, and takes them to the garage. He's had Steve's bike there for a while, the deal was for him to spec and check it to then pass it on to Bucky. It feels as if Sam got the short end of the stick, Steve's bike is a beauty, much better than a vibranium frisbee. Maybe he's biased, he has enough reason to hate that shield. 

Chunk of bagel in mouth, he flicks his tool box open and starts to snoop around the bikes engine. 

He feels so at peace, happy even. He shouldn't, considering Death herself is mad he killed her big purple fling, but the weathers nice, he's doing what he loves, and he's still bathing in the afterglow of the night before. It's hard to believe he really has a beautiful, naked Stephen sleeping upstairs. His. For a while all he's wanted is Stephen. He has Peter, his friends, his work, Stephen was the last piece. 

He swallows the last of the bagel chunk and turns to switch tools. His tool box isn't where he put it. 

A sudden pain ripples over the back of his head. 

-

There's a faint smell of incense, it takes him back to the time before the snap, to that name, Thanos. 

His head throbs when he tips it to the side. He can't move his arms. His socked feet rest on a patterned floor. A pattern he knows. 

Slowly, he looks up. The white of Alias robes make him squint. His eyes aren't ready for something so stark. 

She's standing at the foot of the stairs, looking in the direction of the main doors. 

"Alia" 

She faces him, gives him a curt nod, like he isn't being held hostage. "Stark" 

"Should I even be calling you Alia?" 

She tips her head to the side. "What else would you call me?" 

"Death" he struggles to no avail, it seems he's tied to a chair with some kind of glowing rope. 

Her blue brows draw together, "How… Hm. I should have played closer attention to that librarian" 

"Well why am I tied to a chair? Do you have a monologue before you kill me?" Having heard speeches from Thanos, Ultron, Zemo and Loki, he doubts she could beat them. Fucked as they were, they were very good with words. 

"Death isn't part of me in the way you think. She's an advisor to me"

"Scammers give better advice" he tries the laser between his knuckles to cut the rope. It doesn't work. He could disengage his arm and slide out, but she would stop him in the time it would take to do that. 

"She yields results"

"So where is she?" 

"On her way, human host bodies are limited in what they can do" 

"Do you really want this?" Technically she could have killed him, maybe not with Death's power, but with her own. Maybe it's compassion, maybe Death wants to be the one to do it. 

"Do you think I care if you live or die?" 

"Did you blip? Because if you did we saved your ass" if he can break the back of the chair off of the seat he could escape. Where is the question, and could he do it fast enough. 

"I did. I can't say I wanted to come back" 

He gets it. She's done bad things, killed an innocent girl, gotten her friend into prison, it would be easy to just be gone. He thinks that too, it would have been easy to die with the snap, tap out on a high.

But now, with Stephen, he might be able to have what he's wanted for years, someone to love, someone to be his family. It'll be hard, with what Stephen is now, but he's worth it. 

Alias attention snaps back to the door, she walks closer to it and it cracks open. Death must be at the step, he has to act.

He grabs on to the chair and activates the repulsor in his palm. It blasts it clean off and he sprints to his right, as fast as he can with both arms and a chair back attached to him. 

The cauldron of the cosmos flies right in front of his nose and crashes into the wall next to him. Not hesitating, he skids around it and through a door. It's a hallway to another door, and as he dashes down it he realises that door keeps getting further and further. She's using the sanctum against him. 

A new door appears in the wall next to him and a hand shoots out of it, pulling him through. 

They're in a dim library. The hand is attached to Wong. He makes the rope around him disappear and the back of the chair falls to the floor.

"It won't take Alia long to put together where you are, let's go" 

Without a moment to catch his breath Wong yanks him and again they're running, through the library, down two halls and out into a big courtyard with stone floors and people in robes going about their day as normal. They aren't in the sanctum anymore, clearly. 

He turns to his left to watch a pole coming straight for him, it collides against his middle and launches him against the wall behind them. 

Slowly, he recovers, enough to puke his breakfast out on the gravel and look up to see Wong fighting a multitude of floating weapons. Alia is of course controlling them, she floats in the air with her arms outstretched and if she wasn't trying to kill them she might look like an angel. 

A portal opens behind Wong and in front of him. He taps the reactor and feels the suit crawl over him in a comforting wave. 

Chandler steps out. 

"What?" The girl that hit him with her car and couldn't stop apologizing, Bruce's ex girlfriend, what was her play? 

"Hi Tony" she walks toward him and when he holds his palm up at her she doesn't slow down.

Right. The girl that hit him with her car. Of course. 

When she's too close for comfort he fires the repulsor. It blows her back and she knocks Wong over.

The floating weapons are suddenly directed at him. He shoots up into the air and flies dizzying loops to avoid them until he's sick of it and shoots straight for Alia, knocking her out of the air and wrestling with her when he has her on the floor. 

He's not sure what to do, killing isn't his style. Stephen would be a good addition to the fight, he could just portal her into another dimension. 

The choice is ripped away from him when an entire weapon rack smacks into him. He skids along the bumpy ground and when he finally finds purchase something else is dragging him, dragging his foot like a force from a horror movie until he's looking up at Chandler's unsettling green eyes. 

He can hear Wong telling him to get away, followed by a lot of crashing and breaking wood. But he can't move, his suit is frozen. It might be Alia or Chandler, but one of them is powerful enough to hold each nanoparticle together in a rigid skeleton. 

Chandler kneels between his legs, "You and I are gonna have fun in the afterlife"

All of a sudden he can feel the nanites of his helmet retreating down. As much as he fights for them to stay it doesn't stop. Second by second, section by section, his face reveals itself to her.

"Good night" he watches her delicate hand reach for his face and assumes it's the end, that she'll touch him and his soul will belong to her.

And that's when in a black blur, something collides with Chandler and propels her away. He's stuck in place watching the two figures roll along the floor in sparks of pink flame until it's clear that Stephens arrived. 

He holds Chandler to the floor, hand squeezing her neck to kill, not threaten. His skin looks pink, likely burning under the evening sun, and the parts of his body touching the ground are quite literally on fire. It explains what he said about not being able to walk sacred ground. 

There's another loud crash somewhere he can't see and all in one go he can use his body again. Not stopping to question it, he redeploys the helmet and shoots into the air to read the situation.

Stephens on fire, Alia is recovering from whatever Wong did to her, and Chandler, or Death, looks like she actually might pass out. 

He's not going to wait for him to turn to ash, he swoops down and yanks Stephen away from her. He struggles against his grip but the fire crackles away so he can finally exhale. "Stephen get out of here man"

Stephen teleports out of his arm and fixes him with a glare. "I just saved you from death"

He looks menacing, floating there in his black suit with his cloak spread behind him, but it doesn't conceal the irritated red skin on his face and hands. "And you're going to die if you keep burning" 

"See if I care" he spins around to look at Chandler where she's gasping for air on the floor but before he can do whatever he plans to do to her an office chair smacks him square in the face and the two of them go tumbling to the ground. 

He manages to push against the momentum and grab Stephen before he touches the floor. Together they watch as Alia regains her position up in the air and starts funneling furniture through four portals positioned at each corner of the courtyard. 

"Fuck"

"Yeah I agree. Two can play this game though" Stephen breaks free of his hold and holds out his hands at the collection of tables, chairs, plants and lamps coming at them. Just like in New York an invisible force pushes it all back and away from the courtyard completely.

Stephen turns back to him, winks, and shoots up into the air to look Alia face to face. He's about to go help when he's grabbed by the arm and spun around to look Death in the eye. He doesn't feel bad when he fires his repulsor against her stomach and propels her back into a pillar. 

Again his arm is grabbed and he almost blows Wong's head off, which looks like has almost happened already with the way blood is oozing out of a slash on his brow and staining his face. "Jesus are you okay?"

"Fine. Listen, Death is practically a non threat in that body, as long as we don't let her touch you, which seems like the first step to her killing. We need to worry about Alia" they look up at her and Stephen throwing office and household objects at each other. If he squints smoke is starting to float off the surface of his skin. They need to act fast. 

"Okay how do we decommission her?" He adverts his sight to Chandler, she's struggling to stand up but the suit tells him all her vitals are perfectly fine. 

"I'm thinking the classic, portal her into a void. For that we need her to be pushed into it though"

"I can wait for an opening" he watches Stephen rip a table that's coming at him in half and launch the two pieces at Alia with only a movement of his hands. He doesn't have the time to stop a lamp from hitting him in the back of the head. He must be losing power.

"Okay. Stay in the air. I'll keep an eye on the girl" 

Tony leaves Wong's side in a flash of blue and goes to Stephen, posing back to back with him so he can blast anything out of his line of sight to hell. They’re working together perfectly for a while, not letting anything slip past them, until Stephen really smells like burnt flesh and a printer the size of the two of them is barrelling down from above. 

Tony catches it and the suits hands build up clamps to hold it steady. He expected to lose altitude due to the impact but it keeps going, the thing is exerting a huge force on him, making it feel the weight of a cruise ship instead of what it is. Soon he’ll touch ground, then it’ll crush his shoulders. 

When he looks down Wong is there, pointing at something behind him, “Tony! Portal!”

He puts all he can into his thrusters, expanding his feet to canons to double the propulsion and cranes his neck around. There’s indeed a portal, made in the ground and leading to nothing but black. He turns to tell Wong he needs help, that he can’t even push the printer off him, but he’s crouched over chandler doing god knows what.

“Stephen! Portal!” he projects his voice and hopes to god he can hear from above.

He hears something breaking, then a yell that's unmistakably Stephens, and two bodies fly into his view, Stephen with Alia in his hold. He sinks her into the portal like a football on grass and the ring snaps closed.

The printer very quickly loses all the additional force that was being put on it and he almost rockets into the air, dropping it in the process. It scatters to pieces on the stone ground. 

When he turns to look at Stephen he almost falls out of the sky, landing heavy and stumbling to his knees next to him. He’s face down on the floor, with part of a wooden table lodged deep in his back. Blood soundlessly runs off the sides of his torso and gathers over the dusty rocks. He’s not moving.

He realises he hasn’t moved either. He realises he’s panicking.

“Drag him into the shade” Wong calls. It wakes him up, he gets off his knees and hooks his arms under Stephens armpits, dragging his limp body until the sun is blocked by the pillared structure of the walkway from one building to another.

“I should pull it out right? He won't bleed out right? He’ll heal?” When only the soft wind replies he realises Wong didn’t follow him.

He makes the call, pressing his knee to Stephens shoulder blade to keep him grounded and gripping onto the wood with both hands. He feels sick as he wiggles it and when it dislodges he feels terrified yanking it out. 

Stephen doesn’t move, the huge gash doesn’t close. 

He turns him around. Stephen's face is cracked up, worse than his was when he was stuck in a desert, and between the cracks even darker blood gathers. 

Blood.

He has the suit retract on his left arm, up to his elbow, and his right index finger becomes a sharp edge. There’s no pain in slashing his wrist open, the only thing in his mind is Stephen.

“Come on you assshole don’t leave me” he practically jams his wrist in Stephens ajar mouth and keeps it that way. He won't give up until he bleeds out, Stephen isn’t made out of the stuff that dies, he never has been, he has to live. The world needs him, he needs him. 

He realises Stephen isn't on fire anymore. It’s not relieving, it only means the worst. The place can’t even sense his presence. 

“Tony how is he?” Wong comes closer, pulling Chandler along by one of those glowing ropes. 

“I don’t know” it comes out like a sob. He can’t cry, he has to get Stephen back

“Stay very still alright, I’m going to portal us somewhere dark”

“My cabin” 

In what feels like a little hop, the space around them flashes from courtyard to living room. Wong leaves Chandler standing by the work table, seemingly useless being covered from mouth to thighs in rope, and closes every blind and curtain.

“He looks… better maybe” He croaks when Wong turns the lamp on, he’s not sure if Stephen is healing or if tears and a lack of blood are clouding his vision of the truth. 

“You don't look so good, let's switch” Wong jogs to the kitchen and pulls out a meat knife.

Tony freezes when a cold hand circles his forearm. “I think you look gorgeous” Stephen murmurs.

“Oh you… you piece of shit don’t scare me like that” he laughs out. His vision clears when the gathered tears in his eyes flow down his cheeks.

Stephen smiles, snatches his wrist back to lick the wound closed, and smiles again. Dopey shit. 

“Well thank god, what would I do without an annoying white man in my life” Wong sighs out. Tony can see he looks relieved underneath the banter. 

“I think the annoying white man will just lay down for a bit” Stephen murmurs at the ceiling. 

“Yes you do that. Tony, would you join me?” Wong jerks his head toward the 4th person in the room.

When he stands the suit has to save him from falling over. He could really use laying down too. When everything is dealt with he and Stephen can do it together. 

Wong picks up a dining room chair, places it down in front of the door, and pushes Chandler into it. She doesn't say anything when Wong lets the rope over her mouth fall away but she looks afraid, like she’s staring down the barrel of a gun. Tony frowns when he sees her eyes are brown again, like they were in the hospital.

“If you don’t tell us how to get rid of you the easy way we’ll have to find a hard way” Wong says.

Chandler sighs. “I’ve been trying to push her out of me for a long time, I’m sure a simple exorcism would finish the job”

Wong turns to him, “I don’t buy it, she wants us to do it and I don’t want to find out why”

“I dunno Wong, this girl isn’t Death, they're not one in the same. The host body is still a person” Bruce said they’ve known each other for years, decades even. He loved her once. She has a husband. 

“Alia was a person when she snatched you” 

He pauses to consider that, “Okay good point. Still, lets not kill Chandler in the process of getting rid of Death”

“Well how did she get in you in the first place?”

“It was a near death situation, I’m sure being in the vail between dead and alive made me accesible to her. Anyway, we share a body, it’s given me abilities, many of them I don't want. Right now she’s screaming inside my head, she wants her control back, she wants to kill you Mr Stark, really badly” she looks at him apologetically. 

“I thought as much. How do you keep her out?” He really needs to sit down, so he slides up onto the work table. 

“She’s gotten weaker with how much I've been fighting her. She doesn't live in this plane of existence, I do, it gives me an edge”

“Can she come here?” Wong asks, expression thoughtful. 

“No, the Asgardians trapped her in her world”

“So you’re the loose end” he concludes, scratching his beard with metal fingers.

“She’ll take over someone new” 

“Maybe I should visit her, in person” Stephen pipes up behind them, still a starfish on the floor.

“You’ll do no such thing Stephen” Wong throws back. It’s good he spoke first, Tony was going to tell him to shut the hell up. 

“Would it be a calculated risk or just a risk to leave her inside Chandler?” he proposes. 

That seems to panic the woman. “It won’t matter, she can switch from me to another host”

“Better we get her out of you then” Wong says, tune changed. 

“Before we do that I… I owe you all, for all the trouble I’ve caused” His impression of Chandler was a jittery girl who didn’t quite know how to take up space, but seeing her now, she has the steel gaze of someone determined, someone who’s been through too much. 

“Join the other 4 billion people that ‘owe’ us for giving them their lives back” Stephen says. He’s gotten up and sat on the arm of the couch. 

“I mean there's something I can give you. I can, well, bring people back from the dead”

Like a sudden vision he sees Natasha. She walks out of a curtain of blinding light with an equally blinding smile, she makes a clever joke, they laugh. He can hear her laugh, feel her dark chocolate voice over his skin. 

It’s gone when he blinks. Because she’s gone forever. 

What he really sees is Chander staring at Stephen and Stephen staring right back, large hand squeezing the couch. He hears the words unspoken. 

“How?” Stephen exhales, as if he needed to. 

“I have to have the body, and touch it, and I can breathe life back into it, literally” 

He looks at Stephen, sees that familiar gleam of inspiration in his crystal eyes, and scoots off the table to get between the two of them. “Hey let’s not get hasty, Stephen isn’t dead dead”

“True, and I don’t know if I can turn a vampire back into a human, I never have before” 

Stephen walks up to him and rests his fingers gently on his elbow. He doesn't take his eyes off Chandler though. “If you were to try, what's the worst case scenario?”

“Other than nothing happening? You could die mid transition” 

“But technically if I die then you can bring me back from the actual dead” he argues. There's no doubt in Tony’s mind, Stephen wants to try it. 

“Technically”

“Why technically?” he asks her. Technically is not certain enough by miles.

“Death when it comes to ‘undead’ things is a gray area” 

They’re all quiet for a moment. Stephen is in his own world so Tony shares a look with Wong. It seems they’re thinking the same thing. 

“Stephen can we speak in private?”

Stephen nods, but he does so distractedly. Tony has to lead him up the stairs by the arm.

“Okay. Let’s just sit here and think about everything quietly for a moment, before we go making big decisions” He sits on the edge of his bed and waits expectantly for Stephen to follow suit.

“I think I should try it”

“Can you think about it first?” he insists, pulling Stephen close to him by the wrist. Fighting death didn’t scare him like this does, the thought that just a little bad luck could kill Stephen for good. 

Stephen snatches his hand and holds it firmly, leaning to look him in the eyes. “What is there to think? How often do you get to resurrect?”

“What if you really die?”

The fear in his eyes must show, because the excitement in Stephens dimms, leaving something sympathetic behind. “It’s worth trying”

“Why do you want to be human so badly? It’s awful, just look at me as an example, I’m damaged and graying and I’m missing an arm and my back hurts, all the time.”

Stephen shakes his head at him, “Tony you are probably one of the best examples of the beauty of humanity”

He doesn’t get it. He walks in a mangled, weathered vessel. Stephen walks in a strong, stunning one, and he could be that way forever. Yet he wants to throw that forever away. “Just trust me, I’m 10- no 15 years older than you, you can be immortal, you can be young forever, you want that”

Stephens gaze goes cold as his hand, “No I don’t want that, and maybe the reason you don’t know that is because I can’t spend 20 minues with you without having to leave because the smell of you makes me feral, or maybe it’s because when you’re awake I sleep, and when you sleep I’m awake”

There’s truth to that, he has to admit. They would live a stumbling life, with mismatching schedules and strange limitations. But they would live, both of them, together. “I… I don’t want you to risk your life. I’m fine with this, what we have now”

Stephen lets go of his hands to cross his arms over his chest. Somehow Tony’s hand is even colder without his. “You’re fine now, but what happens when you haven’t slept in days, what happens when you’re tired of being a blood bag, what happens when you want to take me out during the day?”

“There was a time, two times, no three, that I thought you were dead. I don’t need another. Having you here, as you are, is my miracle” he really means it. It doesn't matter that life will be strange with Stephen, life has always been strange for him, much stranger and harder than differing body clocks and special diets. 

“What if I thought about it and still wanted to do it? Would you force me to stay like this?” Stephen asks, his voice gone soft. 

“I wouldn’t. I guess, it’s stupid, but I thought you would change your mind for me. If you're gone I- that’s it you know? I’m just a retired old man waiting to die” Stephen really is that one star in his sky, that one that shines brighter and bolder. He’s the star that makes him smile when he spots it in the sky. But nobody owns the stars. 

Stephen drops heavily into a kneel at his feet, gathering both his hands in his and catching him in his bright eyes, hook, line and sinker. “I want to be human for you Tony, for you. Not to alarm you but I’m in love with you, I want to live with you, call you my partner, then my fiance, then my husband. I want to wake up in the morning and see your face in natural light, I want to get coffee with you under a sky ruined by the Avengers tower, I want to get married and watch the sun bounce off the surface of the ring I’m slipping on your finger. I want to grow old with you, to tell you your glasses are on your head when you misplace them and not hear your reply because I left my hearing aid in the bathroom”

He frowns, trying to digest what he's hearing. It's like looking at a blank wall, so he writes out the words. Stephen loves him. Stephen wants to take him by the hand and walk with him until the end of the line. 

Despite being dumbstruck, he notices Stephen's shoulders fall. “And if you don’t want that, if you don’t ever come to love me, or only love me for a moment, the last thing I want is to live for thousands of years knowing what it feels like to have the only thing that mattered to me and lose it” his hands tighten over his own, desperately, as if he's going to slip out of his grasp.

How could he ever want to slip out of Stephens grasp? 

“You… you want to be with me from right now until the day you die?”

“If I can’t meet you in the afterlife, yeah” he smiles, and his eyes melt like they're crying with no tears. 

It took him 50 years but he finally found it.

“What time is it?” He whispers.

He found the thing that has complete grasp on his heart. 

Stephen glances past him, at the clock on the nightstand, and snaps his eyes right back like he can't stand not to look at him. “11:29. Why?”

He found the reason he survived. 

“I think I just fell in love with you, like right now, I want to remember the time”

He survived so that he could make Stephen happy, and so that Stephen could make him the same.

A wet, elated laugh bursts out of Stephen and he smashes their lips together like it's his numbers that won the lottery. “Tony you nerd”

He survived because the only way his body wants to die is with love in its heart. 

“So are you sure? You want to try?” Tony rests his forehead against Stephens and closes his eyes, to just experience the points where they touch, the echoes of words just spoken.

“I won’t change my mind”

He doesn't sound like a man who has any doubt so Tony sucks it up, breathes it out, and makes it his reality. 

“If you don’t survive this I’ll have to find someone to fill the big empty hole you leave behind” he leans back so Stephen can see his pout, and the humour in his eyes. Because he would never just stuff a hole if Stephen left it. He couldn't.

He chuckles, pressing one cold kiss to Tony's flesh hand and another to his metal one. “Well then I definitely will be living”

“Okay. Let’s get you resurrected”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I know this is weird and that most people expected well... not this lmao. It felt natural though, and you'll see more in the next chapter why I went for it. What do you think though, about Stephen possibly being human again?


	9. Daylight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The tooth rotting epilogue <3

-1 year later-

Tony waves off the last health and safety inspectors and watches with a grin as their car shrinks into the distance. Finally it's done, the compound, the additional buildings around it, the green space, it's all finished. 

The work was supposed to be done well before Christmas but a pandemic he'd rather never think about again halted production for six months. Finally the two of them are looking at the place gleaming under the summer sun. 

"It's just like it was before. But better. Man I'm good at my job" he shields his eyes to catch more detail. It's like looking at a new suit, something beautiful and functional and something he feels pride setting his eyes on. 

"Renovating buildings isn't your job now is it?" Stephen raises a brow. Maybe he thinks he's going to go on some kind of retirement craze and start a tv show about house renovations. That would be awful. 

"True, I meant to say good at everything" he looks over at Stephen. He's like a suit too, beautiful and functional, his own personal slice of happiness. Of course unlike a suit, Stephen could never be replaced or upgraded. And would never need to be. . 

"Right, because when you played that guys violin in Barcelona it wasn't awful"

"You snap spaghetti when you put it in the pan" He cringes just remembering the screams of the dry pasta when he brutalized it. 

"It doesn't make a difference," he grumbles. 

"You're fucking lucky I love you so much because usually that kinda slander is a deal breaker" he feels hot under the collar of his polo at anger that could have been, if Stephen were a lesser man. 

A grin spreads on Stephens face, he looks not unlike a Cheshire cat. "Does that mean I can get away with anything?" 

Tony makes a point of not looking at him. 

"Can I get away with recycling our first date like a moron?" Stephen takes him by the wrist and leads them out onto the expanse of fresh grass. 

"We're going to the beach?" That was a great date. It was the day after Stephen woke up from a week-long sleep, as a human. He was so full of energy and renewed wonder. He wanted to go to the beach somewhere hot to just remember what it's like to actually enjoy the sun. He stripped down to his boxers and just layed in the sun for an age, until he got sunburn, as Tony warned him would happen. After that they got sorbet, watched the sunset, and portaled back to the cabin. They had sex by the lake, in a lawn chair. They broke the lawn chair. 

"No we're having coffee, and the shiny new compound is going to ruin our view" out of nowhere a round table and two chairs appear, just like the ones from that first time. Tony hadn't thought of that as a date, more as a weird moment in time where he figured out Stephen was so different out of robe and cloak. Looking back it was fun, and intimate, and he did realise how gorgeous Stephen was then. It sounds like a date. 

"Anything I produce is a view ruiner now? Do I ruin your view?" He jokes as they sit. Two tall glasses of coffee with ice and straws clink softly when they appear on the table. 

Somehow Stephen is more beautiful a year later. He's a god, there's no other way to put it. He's smiling at him like there's nothing else, with his windblown hair and his sun kissed skin and his crystal eyes. He's wearing a fresh white shirt, rolled to the elbows, and he looks like he just stepped out of heaven to sit with him. 

"No you are th…" 

He grins at the way Stephen swallows his words. "You were going to tell me I am the view" 

"Yea" he sighs, exasperated at himself for once.

Tony stretches over the table and gives Stephen a smooch. "I love you"

He wonders if the honeymoon period of a relationship can really last as long as a year, because he's still as silly about Stephen as he was when they started dating. Sure, they've argued, when Stephens work puts stress on them both, or when Tony and and Peter unite to do something Stephen would only call 'wrekless and stupid'. But they love each other with a fierce passion though it all, it's why they argue at all, Tony worries so much when Stephens is gone for days and Stephen just wants him and Peter to be safe. 

It could be how it's supposed to be, when you find that person that was made for you. Every day is a honeymoon. 

"You just drink your coffee, but not too fast you might choke" Stephen captures his straw in his mouth and stares across the table with that signature smirk on his lips.

"Why would I cho-"

He chokes on air itself when he puts the pieces together. With the way Stephens watching him, devious and anticipating, he can only come to one conclusion. Using his right hand because his left might be shaking, he holds the glass up to the sun and squints in an attempt to see through it. Unfortunately milk and coffee are hard things to see through so he gently shakes the glass, listening for a clink.

"I didn't put a ring in your drink, I'm not that ridiculous. I just wanted that reaction" 

He pauses, scowls something ugly at Stephen, and aggressively drinks the stupid coffee. "You are… Just the worst" 

They haven't talked about marriage at all since the night he changed back, and he hasn't thought about it much, being more than happy just living his every day with Stephen. Now that he had that moment where he thought it was going to happen, he realises he's disappointed it hasn't. He ponders at the diminishing liquid in his glass if it's too early to go engagement ring shopping. 

"Why limit myself to a glass? I'm the Sorcerer Supreme" 

He looks up and follows Stephens index finger to a spot on the ground. There's a little sprout of something in the grass, something that keeps growing as he watches it, like footage of plants in documentaries that are wildly sped up. 

The sprout starts bright green, with a round part at the top that splits into two as it grows, looking like a baby flytrap. In the mouth of the sprout two leaves grow, and two more, and it keeps going, the leaves open up like a flower. They change though, become pointed and don't grow as large as the others. It's mesmerising how they open up, like they're receiving the world.

Just in a few seconds the plant is as tall as the table, and he recognises it. It's a sunflower about to bloom it's vibrant yellow petals. Except instead of yellow the petals that emerge are silver, not a silver colour, but unmistakably actual silver. The pointed petals open proud and reflect the sun with purpose. 

Before he can ask Stephen reaches over and plucks one of the petals out of the flower. It immediately fills the gap with a new one. 

Stephen closes his fingers over the petal and looks up at him with a cocky yet loving smile. All he can offer back is a frown, because he’s seen some weird things from Stephen but this, he doesn’t know what the hell is going on. 

He opens his hand and there's a ring sitting in his palm. It’s thin and simple, then Stephen blows on it gently and little blue stones seem to grow out of the very metal to adorn it.

“Well,” Stephen starts, pinching the ring between his thumb and forefinger, “What do you say we get married?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Get you a man like Stephen.
> 
> So another fic done! It's been good fun, please let me know how you felt about this story in the comments. 
> 
> Also I hope you're subscribed/follow me on tumblr (Wifeofstark) because I have the next fic geared up and ready to go, coming in a few days. (I'm a machine ik)

**Author's Note:**

> Hope you enjoyed! Will be posting every 3-5 days.
> 
> Tumblr: @wifeofstark


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